Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Hank wakes up alone, surrounded by wildflowers and nothing else. 

These wildflowers will later come to be called the forget-me-not. These were the field version, of course, myosotis arvensis, but still forget-me-nots. The term will come to English as a direct translation from another language in the fifteenth century, about two hundred years after Hank wakes, and when he first hears the word applied to the flower he has pressed into one of his books, he will laugh at the irony.

But when he wakes, he does not have a name for the flowers. He does not even have a name for himself. He does not know who he is or what he is doing here. He does not remember anything. 

Irony, you see.

Death is a gift I give, says a voice that seems to come from everywhere all at once and is yet still somehow quiet. It is a gift you have taken and I have taken it from you.

He blinks up at the sky and tries to talk, but finds himself incapable. What does that mean, he thinks instead, what do you mean and who are you and who am I, but the voice does not answer his questions.

Instead, it just tells him, You will understand, and then there is birdsong and sun and no voice but his own in his head. 

He will think, later, that this is the first time he realizes that the gods are not kind. He will be wrong about this, about it being the first time, but it is what he will think when he reflects on the voice’s statement to him.

Because he doesn’t understand. 

He doesn’t understand at all.

The future tense is tricky in that way. It predicts, but gives no timeline; promises, but can wait long enough to deliver on a promise to make you think it is just a lie. But the god who spoke to him was correct, and is: he will understand. It will just take a very long time.

But this story does not begin when he understands. It does not even begin when he wakes up in the field, though that is where we have found ourselves. The god who spoke to Hank might argue there is not a beginning at all. But ours is not to philosophize. Ours, at the moment, is simply to follow Hank as he stands in the field of what will someday be forget-me-nots, as he walks in a direction he thinks has no meaning, as he tries desperately to remember, and to understand.

It is not the beginning, precisely. But it is, nonetheless, where we will start.

Life, Hank comes to think, is less a story in which he is the main character and more a cruel joke of which he is the punchline.

Because. Stories have endings. It might be a happily ever after or something sad or some kind of cliffhanger or some pretentious ‘well what do you think happened?’ ending, but books, movies, television, there’s always some point where you run out of pages or reach the credits and the screen goes black. You can say the characters keep on living, but your experience of the story ends somewhere, and that’s how it should be. 

Hank’s story hasn’t ended for eight hundred years, and he’s so fucking tired of it. He doesn’t get older, he doesn’t die no matter how hard he tries, and maybe the worst fucking part is that he has no idea why. He remembers waking up in the middle of nowhere and he remembers walking to his first town and he remembers the first time he lost somebody he loved and he remembers the first time he tried to kill himself and failed and he remembers every single goddamn thing after that, but everything before that field is just—nothing. Absolutely nothing at all.

So all he can do is keep living, not really ever that well, and curse the voice that told him he would understand. A god, probably, one of the big ones. He knows now they exist, and he’s presuming they hate him for some reason. Probably something to do with him taking away the god’s shitty death gift, whatever the hell that means. At least by now he does understand that not being able to die ever sucks, but it’s not a gift he’s not allowed, just a taunt held over his head. 

When he first woke up, went to that first town, he tried to integrate. He tried to learn a trade, set up a life for himself. He even married, though his wife died from sickness after a few years. But about fifteen years into living there, the village noticed he hadn’t gotten any grayer and called him a demon, an unholy being sent to lead them into evil and to put a curse upon their children. And he got angry, and sad, because he had known a lot of these people, helped a lot of these people, and it didn’t matter to them somehow. And that anger boiled in him, anger from trying not meaning anything and anger from this whole fucking situation, and the houses around him caught fire. Wood and straw. It didn’t take much.

Immediately, there was screaming, crying, pleas for mercy. The shame and horror and disbelief and sadness was just as immediate in him, and his anger was put out alongside the fire by the rain that started to fall from the sky. He left the town and any desire to try again with it, and the rain followed him all the way to the field he woke up in. 

He lay down in mud and grass and blue flowers, and he took a knife to his throat, and then he woke up again.

He screamed too, then, and cried, and asked for mercy. Nobody gave it to him. Nobody said anything at all. And so he walked off in the direction opposite from the town he had lived in and found another one.

He’s been in a lot of towns since. A lot of countries, a lot of continents. Never too long—never long enough to let them see he doesn’t age, never reckless enough to let them see he doesn’t die. The move from one city to another is one he’s got down to a science, by now. He has somebody helping him with records, enough money to maintain empty houses in a few locations—Canada, the UK, France. And here, in Detroit, Michigan. It’s a small place. Unobtrusive, which is how he prefers it. He has the funds for someplace fancy if he wanted it—turns out even the biggest dumbass can save up a lot when you’ve been around eight hundred years and learned a lot of trades and how to invest and things like that—but he doesn’t want flash or pomp or grandeur. That gets him noticed; that makes it suspicious when he inevitably leaves. Plus, big houses just make it more painfully obvious that he’s alone. 

He walks into his old Detroit residence and flicks the light switch, snorting and shaking his head when he finds the lights don’t turn on. Electricity must not be on yet. Either Reed has been slacking or he just wanted to give Hank a hard time and service will start tomorrow. Probably the latter. It’s fine; he has a lot of candles, and he doesn’t need matches to light them.

Over the years, he’s also learned to control the powers he only learned he had by nearly destroying a village of innocent people. It still gets a bit rainy when he’s sad, but fires only start when he wants them to, and he can do other things too. Telekinesis, for example, and teleportation. But probably the biggest thing is that he can see other people’s futures and fortunes when he touches them, and he can impact them in minor ways. But there’s a funny little twist: he cannot prevent their death. Any time he even thinks of preventing a death, everything in him seizes up and slows until he can barely even think anymore. So. No deaths. Little nudges here and there, but no deaths.

See? Funny. He can’t die and he can’t stop others from dying. Ha fucking ha.

He sits down at a table, low candlelight shadowing his face and setting his glass of whiskey aglow, and thinks of a comment made back during the Black Plague. He never got sick, and sometimes that would give people hope. They would think that because he could not get sick, he might be able to help their loved ones stay well also. But he couldn’t, and that hope would curdle and turn to resentment. He got chased out of several towns, then, and they called him an angel of death sent to watch over the world dying but not to be part of it.

It’d be apt, except he’s definitely no angel. He’s just a guy with no real home and no expiration date. And anyway, angels of death already exist, and they’re assholes. They can’t help him anyway.

The irony of this statement will take him time to learn as well. It is not his fault; like with the flowers, he does not have every piece of information yet. But he will. A promise, a prediction, an eventuality. Another start. Perhaps, even, an end. 

But not yet. That wouldn’t make much of a story, and Hank is wrong here too. He has a story, and he is a main character. 

Just not the only one.

Chapter Text

Our other main character is named Connor, or he would be if he were born today. He does not know this. He knew it once, of course, but that was before he died.

But his story has not ended either. It just started again in new form, with him as a Grim Reaper, with no memories and no name.

He does, however, have an identifier—Reaper 800-51, though his coworkers tend to call him Reaper 800 for convenience—and a purpose. His purpose is the same as that of the other Grim Reapers: to ensure that the souls of the dead are led to their next destination. Some will forget their previous lives and be reincarnated, depending on how many cycles they’ve lived; some have lived their lives and will be punished or rewarded for their actions. But all go through the domain of a Grim Reaper first to be briefed and redirected. It is an efficient system, and the Grim Reapers are told that it has existed since death itself existed.

This is not precisely accurate. Humans died for some time before any problems developed, and those problems continued for longer before a god decided on a solution: for those who caused the problems to be punished and then integrated into the system—without memories, without names, a blank slate to learn and enforce the importance of death. After all, death was a gift this god gave.

It is not a gift the god would allow them to steal without repercussions.

But the Grim Reapers do not know this either. They know their identifiers and their purpose, and that is all they know until they complete their penance. Rumors spread that Grim Reapers are those who committed a grave sin in their previous lives, but they are spoken only in whispers, and the rumor serves only to make the Reapers believe further in their purpose.

It is an efficient system.

Reaper 800 takes pride in not doing anything to slow down that system. He is good at his job, one of the best in the Detroit area—always polite and polished, always punctual. 

But, in his defense, there was a dog.

He was a very cute dog—big and fluffy with a wagging tail—and he looked like he wanted to be pet. It really isn’t his fault he’s late now, running to the park, only stopping to duck behind a tree and tap the armband that renders him invisible and inaudible to humans. With that done, he continues to run until he finds his partner for this appointment on a park bench, looking incredibly unimpressed. It’s fine, though. Reaper 900-87 always looks unimpressed. 

“I’m terribly sorry, Nine, I lost track of time and—” 

Nine raises an eyebrow, grey eyes narrowing. “Reaper 800. What could possibly be more important than your duty?”

Reaper 800 pauses awkwardly, looking down at the ground. “Well, there was a dog, you see.”

There’s a surprised bark of laughter from another park bench, and Reaper 800 whirls his head around to see a man with shoulder-length gray hair, a beard, and beautiful blue eyes. He also looks familiar, somehow, like someone Reaper 800 has seen before and should know, but can’t quite think of. And he can hear them talking. And he’s not a reaper unless he’s visiting from out of district, which is unlikely.

He knows he’s staring, head tilting as he sorts through alternate possibilities—doesn’t have the aura of a god, incredibly unlikely to be one of the upcoming clients, too bold to be a ghost.

“I’ve heard of you,” he says, thoughtful.

“Oh, have you?” The fact that he responds directly is unnecessary confirmation, but he’s glad to know anyway. The question is a bit aggressive, his body language shifting to guarded and irritable so fast that Reaper 800 is almost startled. 

“Yes.” The staring is probably starting to verge on the impolite by now, but he can’t shake that feeling of familiarity, and it’s bothering him. “But I haven’t heard your name.”

“Haven’t heard yours either,” the man says with a saccharine sweet smile that nobody could ever mistake as sincere. He likely knows that Grim Reapers don’t have names. A dig, and not particularly subtle. Reaper 800 does not know why it hurts.

He stares at the man a moment longer before Nine says, sharp, “Reaper 800. It’s almost time.”

“Of course,” he responds, shaking his head minutely. It’s not like him to get so distracted. He looks out to the road nearby, sighing when he locates the clients starting to approach. He gives the man one last look, a tight smile.

“It’s such a nice evening. In precisely a minute and twenty seconds…you should close your eyes.”

The man’s eyes widen, and he starts to frown—not angry, just confused. “Huh?”

“Close your eyes,” Reaper 800 repeats, standing. “Because I doubt this ever gets easier.” 

The man just blinks, and Reaper 800 walks away, Nine at his side. He knows Nine is giving him one of those looks, the one that he gives whenever Reaper 800 says something that he doesn’t understand or agree with. He’s not fond of those looks, but he’d rather have that than discussion. 

What follows does not occur in slow motion, like you might see in the movies Reaper 800 sometimes sees in passing. It happens very quickly, like so many deaths do. 

One of the clients runs into the road after a toy. The other slams on the brakes, but not in time. She’s hit; he spirals and crashes into a divider.

If it does get easier, if he’s wrong, it hasn’t happened yet.

Nine goes for the male client—Josef Tapp, age thirty-three. Cause of death, car accident. He looks confused until he sees his body in the car, and then he gasps, and he cries. Nine handles it with aplomb, as always.

Reaper 800 walks, projecting calm that he isn’t certain he feels, towards the female client. Grace “Gracie” Vann. Cause of death, car accident.

Age seven.

“Hello, Gracie,” he says, crouching down by her as she looks around with big eyes and a furrowed brow. “That’s you, right? Gracie Vann, seven years old?”

She looks at him, a bit distrustful. She was probably taught not to talk to strangers. “Who are you?”

“We haven’t met before. But I’m going to take you to someplace where you can see your mother.” He’s not completely certain if this is true. He’d like to think so.

“We can’t see her. She’s dead.” 

“Yes, she is,” Reaper 800 says, and Gracie finally looks behind them to see herself lying on the road. There’s blood; he wishes she didn't have to see it. 

“Oh,” she says. It almost feels worse that she’s so calm. He thinks she might be trying not to cry. “Okay. Are you an angel, then?”

Some people call the Grim Reapers angels of death. Reaper 800 doesn’t like that term. He does not feel like an angel right now.

“Let’s just say I’m...someone who can help.” Sometimes he is not certain if this is true either. “Who wants to help.” This, at least, he knows is true. He extends a hand. “Come on. We should get going.”

She takes his hand, and he takes her to the garden. The transitional spaces are different for every reaper, but he’s tried to make this as nice as possible, considering the circumstances. It’s in perpetual sunset, trees and a little pond with a boat and a bridge and a bench. He sits next to Gracie on the bench and gives her a cup and tells her that drinking from the cup will make her forget this life, make everything fresh for the next one. She drinks. He directs her to walk over the bridge, and tells her she has to do it alone, and she cries then, but still does it. The light through the trees grows blinding, and when he can see again she’s gone.

He travels back to the site of the crash; about a half hour has passed and there’s still emergency personnel on the scene. A man collapsed on the asphalt and sobbing. Probably her father; there’s a resemblance.

Nine asked, once, why he does this to himself—looks at the aftermath. It’s certainly not a requirement; the paperwork they fill out asks about the death and about them following proper procedure, not about what happened after the death, after people start to mourn, after everything is cleaned away until it looks almost like nothing ever happened. Their paperwork doesn’t care about that. Their supervisors don’t, either.

He hadn’t really had any kind of explanation. At least, not one that he could have spoken out loud without Nine needing to file some kind of report to their supervisors. They’re not supposed to wonder about the point of all this. They are not supposed to doubt. So he didn’t say anything, just smiled quietly and shrugged, and Nine gave him one of those looks he doesn’t like, but left it alone like they always do. 

He looks back to the park. The man isn’t there anymore. He wonders if he closed his eyes. He hopes he did. The man, he’s heard, has been alive for at least eight hundred years. Reaper 800 is at four hundred and thirty-eight years since becoming a reaper, himself. He knows how many bad things you can see in that amount of time. He couldn’t have kept this a nice evening by pretending one of those bad things wasn’t happening in front of him, but maybe the man could. 

He walks over to the park bench where the man was sitting, sits in the same place. It’s cold, but Reaper 800 usually is too. There’s radio chatter from the scene. The man’s sobbing devolves into hiccups, and after some time, a dull silence. 

Like this, he’s almost able to convince himself that he came here just to enjoy the night air, that the police chatter is simply someone with a radio, that the silence is serene instead of the jagged end of somebody’s world.

Almost, he thinks, and closes his eyes.

Chapter Text

Hank didn’t miss Detroit. Not because he dislikes the city or anything, just because he stopped getting attached to cities a long time ago. Every place is just another place for him to be.

There is a park he likes here, though. It’s been in the city a long time. Not as long as him, but long enough it was here the last time he was in Michigan, and a part of him appreciates the consistency. They replaced the benches—probably way too rusty to be useable—but they’re in the same spot: close to the road, but with a nice view. 

It’s only his second day back, but it was a long one. Lots of shit to get sorted, and just because he’s good at it doesn’t mean it’s any less tedious. The sooner he gets the minutiae worked out, though—making sure his paperwork is all in order, working out details of his backstory, getting money back flowing in the right places, setting up grocery delivery, shit like that—the fewer questions get asked and the sooner he can relax. Hence the park, the bench with a nice view, the headphones in so nobody disturbs him.

Except for, as previously mentioned, the gods hate him, which is why there’s a weirdly perfect-looking guy with grey eyes and a starched collar up to his chin staring at him. And why that guy is a Grim Reaper—black armband, which means he’s supposed to be invisible right now, except for Hank had accidentally made eye contact at one point, fuck. And why he’s humming—is that fucking Danny Boy?

“Shut the fuck up, Nine,” he finally snaps, taking out his headphones. Like he said, reapers are assholes, and this one especially so. He’d crossed paths with him in the UK around the 1910’s or so and had really fucking hoped he wouldn’t have to do so ever again. But. Gods hate him, et cetera et cetera, so Reaper 900 is here, at this park, in the decaying flesh. Fuck him.

“I see you finally became tired of ignoring me,” Dickface McFuckhim says, and Hank thinks if he looked at him he might see him smiling in that incredibly pretentious smug way he has. Which is why he’s not going to look at him. Also because his face sucks. It’s not really fair that the dead bastard is so hot. “Which is good, because you weren’t very good at it.”

“Fuck you.”

“I’m sure you’d like that,” he says smoothly, and Hank finally looks in his direction so he can glare at him properly. 

“I’d say ‘you wish’ or something, but you’d probably still take that as an expression of interest in your icicle dick.” 

“So you’ve put thought into the temperature of my dick,” he says, just as smooth and definitely smiling, and Hank groans and slumps over onto his knees.

“I hate you. Why are you even here.”

“There was a worldwide reorganization about a hundred years back. Every reaper was deployed to a different country.” Nine shrugs; a small movement, but Hank can see it from his periphery. “I’ve been here ever since.”

“Great. So what I’m hearing is I’m moving again.” 

“Goodness, Hank. You’d put in that much effort for me? I’m touched.” 

He’s awful, but right that it’d be too much effort. Hank is gonna stay for his normal twenty years. Reed would probably beat him up otherwise. He just scowls in response and looks away.

The next thing he hears isn’t Nine with some other innuendo. There’s footsteps—running—and then a deep breath and then, “I’m terribly sorry, Nine, I lost track of time and—”

Well, that’s interesting. Nine is a nickname Hank gave to Reaper 900, and he hated it. But maybe not as much as he said, if he’s letting this guy use it. Must be another reaper, but he still isn’t gonna look. Nine interrupts the newcomer’s explanation with, “Reaper 800. What could possibly be more important than your duty?” 

There’s a pause, and then an embarrassed, “Well, there was a dog, you see.” 

Hank can’t help it. He laughs, and he looks over at the newcomer. And he immediately wishes he hasn’t. He looks similar enough to Nine that in a different situation Hank might almost wonder if they were related, but also…but also. He has warm, deep brown eyes, and freckles everywhere, and his hair has a slight curl to it, and he looks—soft.

He’s gorgeous, basically, and Hank is fucked. He thinks Nine might be smiling again. Seriously, fuck that guy.

Also the new guy is staring at him too. Jesus. 

“I’ve heard of you,” soft cute reaper guy says, and Hank stiffens. He can only imagine what he’s heard, especially if he hangs around Nine.

“Oh, have you?” he says, and it comes out a bit too aggressive, but the guy doesn’t stop staring. 

“Yes. But I haven’t heard your name.”

If he’s asking for it, he’s not gonna get it. “Haven’t heard yours either,” Hank says, which is maybe a bit mean because he knows as well as anyone reapers don’t know their names, and maybe even meaner because he knows how much it hurt for him to not remember his name. But Hank has never said he’s a nice guy.

The reaper’s expression falls, just a little, and Hank feels bad about it. Not bad enough to apologize, though, and Nine interrupts anyway, like he’s scolding a child, saying it’s time. And—oh, fuck. Why else would they be here? They have a job. Fuck, how depressing.

Reaper 800 or whatever looks at him again, gives him this tiny little smile that looks almost pained, and says, “It’s such a nice evening. In precisely a minute and twenty seconds…” He falls silent for a moment, like he’s not sure he should say this. “You should close your eyes.”

Hank’s mind short-circuits. What the fuck is that? If he knows who he is, he should know he’s seen his fair share of deaths. What, does he think he’s queasy after eight hundred years? “Huh?” he asks, because he doesn’t really know what else to say.

“Close your eyes,” the guy says again, facing him as he stands. “Because I doubt this ever gets easier.”

What the fuck.

Is that—is he trying to be nice? Is that a reaper trying to be, like, considerate? What the hell.

He watches as the weird reaper walks away, shoulders set like he’s walking to his own death instead of somebody else’s. He watches as the kid walks into the road and the car hits her, Jesus fuck, and he doesn’t close his eyes. He watches, even though he was right: it doesn’t get easier. He watches.

Because when he watches he also sees Reaper 800 crouch by the kid’s soul so he’s on her level, sees him hold out his hand to her, sees him walk with her until they vanish.

And he sees his expression. Most people might say he’s calm. But Hank’s done pretend-calm enough to know what it looks like when you need to be acting together but you’re at least a little wrecked inside. And—it makes sense for him. He’s a lot wrecked inside. But for a Grim Reaper? For somebody who’s meant to be a perfect, emotionless servant of the gods, to never question their part in all this, to never question death? That doesn’t make sense. 

But it is very fucking interesting.

He thinks about it all the way home, and he thinks about it all the way up until his front door, when he realizes it’s unlocked. He had definitely locked it.

Either it’s a sophisticated robber or it’s Reed. He knows who he’s banking on. “Hey dipshit,” he says loudly as he opens the door, since he figures the term would apply to both. “Anybody ever teach you to ask before entering?” 

Reed is lounging on his couch, lying down across the whole length. “Pretty sure that’s just vampires,” he says, lifting the remote to switch from some recorded romcom to a live hockey game. Hank doesn’t know why he bothers with the pretense; he’s known Reed has a thing for shitty romance movies since the kid was old enough to know what movies were. 

“Pretty sure it’s everybody with manners,” Hank says, rolling his eyes. “Shove over. This is my couch.” 

“Which I bought.” 

“With my money. Shove the hell over.”

Reed gives an obnoxious yawn and moves his feet to the coffee table, leaving Hank to his spot. Honestly, this is part of the reason he had Reed get the new couch. He wasn’t about to have Reed putting his feet on his mid 18^th century couch, for fuck’s sake. Not when he could make some money off it instead. He looks at Reed. “Not even going to give a proper hello?” 

“What, you want a fucking hug?”

“I was thinking the fucking word, numbnuts.” 

“Fine, whatever, hello.” He looks over at Hank and smiles a bit, probably involuntarily. “It’s been a while.” 

Hank flicks him on the forehead, just lightly. “Good to see you too.” And then, because that’s too sentimental for his taste, “Pictures don’t really do justice to how bad you’re looking in your old age.” 

“Nothing can do justice to how bad you look. Shoulda made you immortal younger.”

Hank snorts, finally relaxing into the couch. “A-fucking-men.” They both don’t watch the hockey game for a while, trying to overcome the awkwardness of twenty years communicating only by text and video with silence alone. It doesn’t really work.

Hank had met Gavin Reed’s father three years into his last stint in Canada. Hank’s not gonna say they were friends because he doesn’t know if that’s exactly right. Finlay Reed was a petty criminal, trying to live off stolen purses and not really succeeding, and Hank stopped him from standing up a drugstore when the guy brushed past him and he saw him getting arrested for it. He gave him some money, more than he would have gotten from the register anyway, and told him where he could find a job. He left after that and figured that’d be the last of it.

But Finlay turned out to be pretty resourceful; he asked around and found the bar Hank was occupying at the time to thank him. He just sort of kept hanging around, after that. And a year later, when his girlfriend Esther got pregnant and gave birth to twins—Gavin and his fraternal twin Elijah—he asked Hank to keep hanging around. It was always a bad idea. 

He did it anyway.

Finlay ended up passing when the boys were fifteen. And—honestly, Hank almost considered staying. Finlay knew his secret, and Esther knew too, and so did Gavin and Elijah. But he had a year left until it’d be twenty, and people were already starting to whisper, like they always did. So he left, but he gave Esther his contact information, set it up so they wouldn’t have any problems with money. He still felt guilty over it, though. Still does.

Esther didn’t contact him all that much; they were never that close. Elijah talked to him every now and then. But Gavin kept it up—first just asking for stories about his dad, then stories about Hank, then advice for getting into college. He was always kind of an abrasive kid. Elijah knew how to talk to people, but Gavin wasn’t great at it, and he often ended up trying to yell his problems away. Hank wasn’t really surprised he latched onto the one person as abrasive as he was. And so they kept talking, usually once a week or so, and when Gavin graduated college he surprised everybody by saying he was going to go to police academy—but not just any police academy, one in the US.

In Detroit.

Esther had called him for the first time in years to yell at him, because they both knew that Detroit was going to be the next place in Hank’s rotation after France, and they both knew that had at least something to do with the reason Gavin was moving there. Which he wasn’t going to admit, but they knew. By that point Elijah had already started to detach himself from the family—started his own company, changed his last name, moved to San Francisco—so she was extra pissed about him ‘taking away the one last good thing in her life’. And he talked to Gavin about it, but he also already knew it wasn’t just about him, that Gavin wanted to make something of himself and didn’t think he could do it at home, that he felt stifled by his mom always telling him how much he looked like his dad and comparing them and holding onto him too tight.

Longer story short, he ended up in the Detroit Police Department, and he started helping Hank manage shit to get back in the city, made him the records he needed. Hank had been pissed at him for that, for risking himself like that, but he had insisted, said it’s not like Hank couldn’t get him out of trouble if he needed anyway. Which is probably true, but still. He’s a dumbass. But Hank knows that most of all.

“I see the electricity’s on,” Hank finally says with a pointed glance at Reed.

“Yeah, you’re welcome. Thought you might appreciate a taste of the Dark Ages—”

Hank flicks him again, and Reed hisses. “I would’ve appreciated a taste of non-lukewarm beer, is what I would’ve appreciated, but ha-ha, funny joke, you’re a genius.” 

“I’ll show you funny if you keep flicking me on the head like I’m still a kid,” Reed says ominously, then sighs, slumping back. “God. You really do still look the same.”

“Yeah,” Hank says, because it’s true. “You thought I was lying?”

“Nah. Still weird, though.” He squints at him. “Like, you’d think it might be a fine wine thing, but you still look like a fucking swamp troll—” 

Hank kicks his shin.

“Ow! Asshole!”

“You didn’t want a head flick. Welcome to adulthood, bucko. Shin kicks and bad hockey.” 

“You fucking suck. I don’t know why I helped you come back.” 

“Me either,” Hank says, but they’re both lying, ‘cause that’s what they do about all this. “Give me the remote. I’m going back to Ever After. This game is awful.”

“I wasn’t—” Reed starts to protest, and Hank throws him a withering look. “Fine. I was. Anyway, yeah, we can watch it, but only if you complain about historical accuracy the whole time.”

“Generous,” Hank murmurs, but goes back to the movie. He’s seen it about a million times with Reed when he was younger, and Reed has always asked him to complain about historical accuracy, so it’s not like they’re covering any new territory here, but if Reed wants to reminisce he’s not gonna stop him. And anyway, it’s mindless enough to retrace these steps that he can think about other shit too. 

You should close your eyes.

Maybe he should have, because maybe then he wouldn’t still be thinking about the pretty reaper with warm eyes and an expression like seeing people die is killing him all over again.

He closes his eyes, then, at the thought, because—it doesn’t matter. This guy doesn’t matter. His mind shouldn’t be making this into something it isn’t, especially not when he doesn’t even know what that something is. 

But when he opens his eyes again, he’s still thinking about him, until Reed elbows him in the side and tells him that he hasn’t said anything yet about how they got a copy of Utopia years before it was published, and asks if he’s finally started to lose his edge. And that’s a challenge, which means now he has to give his full concentration to the semi-historical antics of Drew Barrymore and Dougray Scott. Which means Reaper 800 heads to the background of his mind. 

Though he’s going to need to think of a catchier nickname for him. Reaper 800 is a terrible non-name. 

(Okay. Mostly background, maybe.)

Chapter Text

Reaper 800 doesn’t think much of the man who cannot die, after that day. He does not have much reason to, although he does reflect, in passing, that it would have been nice to know his name.

But life continues without the man’s name, so Reaper 800 sets it aside for now. He has other things to concentrate on. For example, he’s on a ‘shift’ where the death cards he gets only come in for times in the late afternoon to late evening, but he volunteers at a local pet shelter in the mornings. Animals are a lot less complex to deal with than humans. Also usually softer, though he’s not much in the habit of petting humans due to lack of opportunity and an even more pronounced lack of interest.

He’s in a room in back this morning doing baths. Some of the dogs love them; some of them aren’t really into them. This one, a St. Bernard named Sumo by his previous owner, is somewhere in between; he lets himself get washed for a while but eventually gets restless and starts wandering all over the room. Reaper 800 is already wet all over from trying to keep him in the same place, and now soapy from lathering him up and then lunging for him when he attempted to trot away. They’re rinsing now, about halfway done, when the door opens. 

Oh, damn, Reaper 800 has just enough time to think, before Sumo is shooting forward to greet the newcomer by leaping up for their face.

“Mr. Smith,” says the person working front desk today—Tamara, he thinks—sounding horrified, and he winces as he gets to his feet immediately.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, reaching for Sumo, “Sumo is a bit enthusiastic when he gets visitors—” His words die as he sees exactly who the newcomer is.

The man. The immortal one. He blinks, surprised, until Tamara says, “Mr. Smith.” 

“Oh! Yes!” He wrestles Sumo back down, getting even more wet in the process. He’s wearing clothes specifically for the purpose, of course, an old sweatshirt and some jeans, but it is starting to get a bit ridiculous. “Sorry, really.”

The man is smiling at the dog, so he doesn’t actually look too offended. “It’s fine. I know how dogs are.” He finally looks at Reaper 800, and his eyes visibly widen. “Uh. You’re—” 

“He’s one of our volunteers,” Tamara supplies. “Mr. Smith.” 

“Mr. Smith,” the man repeats, with a twitch of his previous smile. “Uh-huh.”

The phone rings from the front, and Tamara grimaces. “Sorry, Mr. Anderson, is it all right if—” 

“Yeah, of course. I’ll just get to know Sumo here.” He kneels down to pet him, not seeming to care much that he’s still very wet.

“Thank you. I’ll be back when the call’s through.” She smiles apologetically, then turns heel to run for the phone.

There’s a short silence, before, “Mr. Smith, huh?”

Reaper 800 ducks his head, reaching for the hose to cover the action. “Yes.”

“What did you make up for a first name? Joe?”

Reaper 800 ducks his head even more to hide what he thinks might be an unpleasant expression, starting up the hose to start washing off Sumo’s hind legs. “Conamail.”

The man—Mr. Anderson, he supposes?—lasts only a moment before starting to laugh. “Oh my God. Oh my God, you called yourself—that means houndlike, right? ‘Like a dog’? Oh my fucking God.”

Reaper 800 thinks he might be blushing. He focuses on washing Sumo. “Nine is of the opinion that I bear similarities to—” He pauses, frowning, as he registers something, finally glancing up at the man. “You know Old Irish?”

The man stops laughing, face twisting as he thinks. “That’s Old Irish?”

“Yes.”

“Huh.” He looks away, expression perturbed. “Guess so.”

Reaper 800 reaches for the stack of towels nearby, starts toweling off Sumo. “You’ve been alive for eight hundred years, yes? You shouldn’t have been around for it. The language started transitioning to early Middle Irish around 900 CE.”

The man’s face twists again, but a lot less confused and a lot more peeved. “Yeah, well, I don’t know shit about what happened before those eight hundred years, so who fuckin’ knows. And what about you? Why the fuck are you giving yourself Old Irish names?” 

Reaper 800 gets another towel, wondering how much he’s comfortable disclosing to a man who is virtually a stranger. He supposes it would be terribly difficult for him to make a report to his supervisors, though. “I was stationed in Ireland prior to being moved to Detroit. They don’t talk about it, but it’s theorized by some that the reorganization was done to avoid us running into reincarnations with the same faces as people we knew in our past lives. It happens every now and then. Anyway, the likelihood is that I lived in Ireland in my past life as well.”

“Huh,” the man says, actually sounding somewhat interested. He looks at what Reaper 800 is doing, then shrugs and gets a towel himself to help with Sumo’s head. Reaper 800 flashes him a quick smile before returning to drying and his reasoning. 

“Also, this is considered somewhat taboo to talk about, but it’s pretty simple to figure out with some basic math. I’ve been a Grim Reaper since 1600 CE. And while we don’t remember any of it, we all know that the period of punishment we undergo after we died is likely to be eight hundred years, just like the period we serve as reapers. It’s the gods’ favored number because eight reflects infinity. And if you subtract eight hundred from sixteen hundred…”

“Eight hundred,” the man murmurs, then starts. “Wait, so—you’re Reaper 800 because—”

“It’s presumably the year I died.” 

“Shit.” The man’s towel stills, contemplatively scratching over Sumo’s ears, who barks approvingly. “That’s really fucking morbid.”

Reaper 800’s mouth turns up at the corners, running the towel over Sumo’s back. “Perhaps. I think that could probably be said for most of the job. Anyway, I woke up knowing Old Irish in addition to Early Modern Irish and English, probably those to ensure I could interact properly with clients. And—well. I like dogs.”

The man gives him a dry, somewhat amused expression. “Gee, really?”

Reaper 800 shrugs. It’s a rhetorical question anyway. 

“Still, Conamail is a mouthful. How about…huh. How about just Con?”

Reaper 800 raises his eyebrows. A nickname implies further interaction, doesn’t it? He’s not completely certain how he feels about that. Another tug of familiarity pulls at him, and he doesn’t know how he feels about that either. “And yet I don’t know your name at all.”

“Oh, shit. Yeah, that’s kind of rude at me at this point, huh.”

It was kind of rude at the initial ‘point’, but Reaper 800 chooses not to mention this. 

“Hank Anderson. You can call me Hank.” 

Hank. It feels right for him. And…still a bit wrong, in the same way it feels wrong to see his hair shorter.

…What an odd thought.

“Not much room for nicknames there,” Reaper 800 says with what he hopes is a companionably teasing tone.

“It actually is already, technically. The, uh—the first name I was given after I woke up was Johan. John, basically. And then, uh, there was this Middle English diminutive suffix ‘kin’, so it was Johan-kin, then Hankin, then…”

“Hank.” Reaper 800 nods thoughtfully. “I suppose we’ve both been stripped of our names, then.”

There’s a silence as Hank looks at him. Reaper 800 looks back, wondering whether he’s said something offensive, until Sumo barks again and shakes himself dry in apparent protest that he’s not being paid attention at the present moment. They’re both covered in small droplets of water, and Reaper 800 laughs, collapsing forward to drape himself over Sumo in a hug. “Sorry, Sumo. Rude of me to leave you out of the conversation.”

“He’s cute,” Hank says, with a slightly odd edge to his voice, but it evens out at the next question. “How old is he? I came here looking for a dog, actually. One of the first things I do when I get to a new place.”

Reaper 800 smiles, pleased. “He’s seven. And a real sweetheart. He’s been here a few months; his old owner surrendered him because he moved in to an apartment that prohibited dogs—” His mouth curls at that, a moment of unpleasantness. Sumo had been heartbroken when he first came in. “Anyway, he’s been nothing but great. He gets excited around visitors, like you saw, but mostly he’s pretty calm. And he’s always the first to come over to you if you’re in a bad mood to flop down on your lap and give you a few kisses. He deserves a good home.” 

“Damn. Do you give these kinds of ringing endorsements for all the dogs?”

“I’m not allowed around people at all, usually,” Reaper 800 says, which is a bit embarrassing to acknowledge, but also true. “But Sumo’s one of my favorites.”

“You’re not allowed?” Hank asks incredulously, scratching under Sumo’s chin. Sumo melts, laying his head down in Hank’s lap. Hank basically melts too at that, cooing at him.

“I’m told interpersonal interaction is not…one of my strengths.” 

Hank gives him an equally incredulous look. “Bullshit. You’ve been fine with me.” 

“When I first asked to volunteer here, they asked where I worked and I ran away.”

Hank seems to be valiantly attempting not to laugh at that. “Uh, I mean, well—”

“When I returned a few hours later, they asked why I ran away and I told them I had something to take care of, and they asked what it was and I said I didn’t know.”

Hank does laugh, then. He has a nice laugh—low and warm. “Well, okay—I don’t think that means socially incompetent. Just a bad liar in a weird situation.” 

Reaper 800 sort of wants him to keep laughing. “When the first person came in, they asked if I had any recommendations for a pet that wouldn’t make any mess and wouldn’t cost much to keep around and I told them the best fit might be a pet rock.”

Hank does keep laughing, doubling over onto Sumo. Reaper 800 likes that, for some reason. “Fuck. I mean, they might’ve deserved that.”

The door opens again, and Sumo looks up inquisitively. It’s Tamara, who seems understandably confused at the sight of a potential adopter with water droplets on his shirt, a towel in his hand, and a dog in his lap, remnants of laughter still clear on his face, and Reaper 800 still with a towel over Sumo’s back. “Um,” she says, with astonishing eloquence. “I…we can still show you some other dogs, if you’d like.”

“Nah.” Hank smiles, but it’s all polite now. “I like Sumo, and he doesn’t seem to mind me too much.” 

“He likes you,” Reaper 800 corrects, because as near as he can tell it’s true, and also because Hank’s smile goes more genuine at the statement.

“Okay, he likes me, apparently. How can I say no to that?”

“Right,” Tamara says slowly. “Well. I can process your paperwork, then. There’s an adoption fee, of course—”

“Yeah, of course. But I can take him home today?”

“Sure.”

“Great.” There’s a few ticks of silence as Tamara stares at Hank expectantly. “Oh, right.” Hank stands, looking ruefully down at his shirt before shrugging. Tamara opens the door again, and Hank turns for a moment, visibly hesitating but not saying anything. 

“Hank,” Reaper 800 says. “I think you have a good name.”

He blinks, then grins, a bit uneven. “Thanks. Yours sucks.” 

Reaper 800 makes a face at him. It’s not really his name anyway—just the one he uses.

“I don’t think it fits. You’re more, uh…more like a dog lover than doglike, you know?”

Reaper 800’s mind automatically comes up with the translation into Old Irish, but it doesn’t connect somehow, like a wrong piece shoved into a puzzle. Or—maybe not a wrong one. Maybe just one that shouldn’t be there.

Conchobar, is the Old Irish name that means dog lover. Or ‘lover of canines’, more accurately, literally ‘hound-desiring’. He’s aware his face has dropped as the thought squirms around in his mind, something he can’t capture or reflect on too long. His head hurts, suddenly. Hank looks like he regrets saying anything—perhaps he thinks it was too familiar a statement. 

“I suppose that would be appropriate,” he finally ekes out. “Have fun with Sumo, Hank.” 

Hank relaxes minutely. “Yeah. Uh—see you around, Con.” 

He thinks he’s probably actually fine with having a nickname. “See you,” Reaper 800 says, and realizes as he says it that it has the odd ring of prophecy instead of platitude. He will see Hank again. He doesn’t know why he’s so certain of that. Statistical probability, perhaps? The city isn’t really as big as people think.

Or maybe just because he wants to see him again. That feels closer to right. Still not exactly—that slight wrongness that Reaper 800 can’t quite put his finger on, just as elusive as Conchobar still flitting around in his thoughts. But closer, and almost as incomprehensible. Reaper 800 doesn’t tend to get attached, much less to people he’s only met twice, and briefly at that. 

But it doesn’t matter. When he comes back to himself, Hank (and Sumo) are already gone, and so he can tell himself it doesn’t matter and find the next dog who needs a bath, and the thoughts that touch on something too big for him to understand quiet—at least enough that he can at least pretend it doesn’t feel like he’s on the verge of something that matters more than he is prepared to deal with.

Chapter Text

Sumo is great, which is the only reason Hank doesn’t regret going to that particular shelter.

It’s not that talking with Reaper 800—Con—Lord, why did he give him a nickname, and one based off his stupid fucking fake name at that—it’s not that talking with him wasn’t nice. It was nice, and that’s the fucking problem. Because he saw the guy with his dumb pretty wide brown eyes and his dumb ratty sweatshirt soaked from head to toe with water and soap from washing fucking dogs while volunteering at a fucking rescue shelter—and he’s funny, and he blushed when Hank needled him about his fake name, and he has this beautiful bright clear laugh that he muffled by nuzzling against a dog. And.

And the point is it’s one thing that he’s unfairly fucking gorgeous. Hank sees gorgeous people all the time. But it’s another entirely that he’s unfairly fucking gorgeous and also really fucking adorable, and yet another still that he’s also a mystery behind all that.

“I suppose we’ve both been stripped of our names,” he had said. Maybe Hank’s reading too much into it, into all of it, but that doesn’t sound like somebody who’s happy about it.

Reapers aren’t supposed to be unhappy about their situation. He had asked Nine once if he ever minded only having a number, and Nine had looked offended. Went off on some spiel about appropriate punishments and losing yourself in work and blah blah blah, like some information pamphlet for a cult. Hank hadn’t brought it up again. And Nine had never mentioned the thing about their numbers being the year they died, either, or about the place they were stationed being the place they died in. “Taboo,” Con had called it, and yet he talked about it to the first person who asked that he could tell without getting into trouble.

And all of that feels like—something. Hank doesn’t know what. But something he wants to know more about. Something he could understand. 

It also feels a lot like a bad idea, to even be thinking about how he can see him again and ask him more questions. He’s still a Grim Reaper, which means he’s still a servant of the gods, which means he’s still part of whatever system it is that fucked Hank over. And Hank should really probably stay out of the whole thing. 

But Hank has been alive for eight hundred years and a dumbass for every single one of them. He’s no stranger to bad ideas.

Sumo makes a small boof noise, almost like a question, as he pads over to Hank and rests his head on his lap. Con had been right about that, at least—Sumo is a perceptive dog, and really sweet. Hank pets him absentmindedly. Guy has a good eye for dogs, maybe because he’s clearly a bit obsessed.

Conchobar, is the name he had been suggesting without even thinking too hard about it. He puts it in the search engine and pretends he’s not thinking too hard about this either. It is indeed Old Irish, the name of a few kings and people like that. 

…Old Irish, huh.

He knows Old Irish.

Why the fuck does he know Old Irish anyway. 

Was he Irish before he woke up? He had assumed Anglo-Saxon or something; he woke up knowing Middle English and some Anglo-Norman French. Plus he woke up in England, albeit before it was England exactly, so it wasn’t too big a stretch. But if the gods are willing to relocate the reapers to avoid them running into reincarnations, well…well. He doesn’t really know how to draw conclusions beyond that with so little information. His head hurts, like he’s repeatedly slamming into some kind of wall. Maybe he is.

Sumo whimpers, and he’s brought out of his reverie. Right. He’s probably not going to figure this out, especially not tonight, and it’s getting late. He has work tomorrow. Reed had pulled some strings to get him an interview with the DPD, and even more strings to make it look like he had the certification to be there—which, hell, he had, a few decades and countries ago. The dumbass is risking himself again even though Hank told him he didn't even need to work. But he said some shit about structure and needing distractions when you’re depressed, and Hank had said bullshit, he wasn’t depressed, and Reed started laughing like an absolute asshole and said please I’m the last person you should ever try to pull that shit with. 

(It’s not like he’s missed the symptoms in Reed or himself. He just doesn’t really want to acknowledge it on either count, but Reed had that expression like if you really want to get into this we can totally get into this, and he didn’t want to get into this then or ever so… 

Anyway the point is he’s starting work tomorrow.) 

So he turns in early like the old fuck he is, but at least he’s an old fuck who’ll probably manage to show up on time for the first day. Punctuality has stopped having much value to him, but he knows that’s not the same for the rest of the world. And he shouldn’t start pushing his luck so early on. So. Alarms, on his phone and an old out-of-fashion manual alarm, and he even lets Sumo clamber up to the bed because he’ll probably protest if he’s fed late, shelter dogs have a schedule and all. Especially if Con is there in mornings. He seems like the schedule type.

…Nope. Going to sleep now, and getting back on that bullshit is not going to help that goal. Sumo edges over slowly until he’s sleeping directly next to Hank, and Hank stops thinking about Reaper 800 and reapers in general so he can pet Sumo until they both fall asleep.

He keeps it up while he gets up in the morning and feeds Sumo the brand Tamara had recommended and showers and gets dressed, and he keeps it up while he drives to work and does the awkward first-day introductions to the receptionists, and he even keeps it up while he walks through the door, but he doesn’t think he can be blamed for not keeping up the not thinking about reapers thing when he sees a reaper there. 

“What the fuck,” he says, maybe a bit too loud for his coworkers’ first impression of him, as he strides towards Nine. Who’s here, for some fucking reason. No armband, so everybody else can see him too, so probably nobody’s dying, which means—he doesn’t fucking know what it means. 

To his credit, Nine looks just as surprised. “Hank?”

Reed, who is standing talking to Nine, looks also very surprised. “You know each other?”

“Un-fucking-fortunately,” Hank growls, reaching them and crossing his arms. “What the hell are you doing here talking to my godson?” (Which is technically a thing Finlay had done, not that he ever talks about it. Except for now, apparently.)

“Fuck’s sake, Hank,” Reed begins, starting to scowl, but Nine just arches an eyebrow.

“I’m a consultant here.”

Hank’s eyes narrow. “Are you.”

“Yes, he is, so hop off his dick, huh?” Reed starts to pull him away, but not before Nine smiles, a bit delighted.

“Is that where you are, Hank? You should have told me.”

“Never in a million fucking years,” Hank hisses, flushing angrily. This is even worse with how Nine looks kind of similar to—aw, God damn it.

“I’ll mark you down in my calendar for a million years from now, then,” Nine says all sing-song like an asshole. Hank considers punching him. It wouldn’t hurt him much or anything; reapers are really fucking strong. 

But maybe not the best way to foster positive working relationships on his first day, he thinks, realizing way too late that the people here at this time of morning are all staring, mostly curious and part amused and maybe part worried too. Reed is still dragging him away to some back part of the precinct; he’s also red in the face, but Hank thinks he might just be embarrassed.

“What the hell,” he asks irritably when they’re in a more secluded area. “How do you know Joe?” 

“Joe,” Hank repeats blandly. 

“Yeah, Joe Black.”

“Oh my fucking God.” Con wins. His name is fucking stupid but he still wins because he doesn’t have Nine’s terrible sense of humor. Also he’s definitely punching Nine at some point. “He’s really a consultant here? How long?”

“Few months. You didn’t answer my question.”

He doesn’t know if he wants to be the one to break the news about him being a Grim Reaper, especially not in the morning, in the back area of a police station, on his first fucking day of work. “We met a while back.”

Reed frowns at the ambiguity. “And, like, you’re not…”

There’s a pause as Reed raises his eyebrows ever higher at him, trying to indicate something he’s clearly not getting. “Not fucking what, Reed?!” 

“Not fucking.” 

Hank chokes on nothing. It’s been a great eight hundred years, but this is where he dies, folks, it’s this moment with him choking on his own spit and coughing up a lung as all of his blood vacates the places where it’s supposed to be doing shit and instead rushes to his cheeks. “Holy fucking shit, Reed! What the fucking—no! Oh my God, no, what the fuck—” 

Reed brightens immediately. “Good to know. I figured he probably had better taste, but—”

Hank blinks, then chokes again. “Oh my God.”

Reed smiles placidly.

“You’re not—” God, this actually makes sense. Reed has a thing for assholes. Like, personalitywise. He doesn’t want to think about physically. Fucking Christ. He tries to get his coughing under control and manages, “You’re not actually trying to say you’re that better taste?” 

Reed’s smile drops and he stomps on Hank’s foot, which means now Hank is coughing and also pitching to the floor. Reed doesn’t hold back like he does. “Fuck you.” 

“Shouldn’t you be saying that to—”

“Fuck you!” He storms away, red in the face again, while Hank stays on the floor cradling his foot.

It’s his first fucking day of work.

He groans when Nine comes gliding around the corner, steps elegant and precise as always, and kneels down by him with a calm smile. “Do you need a hand?”

“I need death to come and take me—” Shit, he regrets being on the internet in the 2010’s, sometimes. Nine is beaming, hand on his chin as he looks down.

“Goodness.” 

“No, I just literally want to die,” he mumbles, head flopping over on his knees. “Joe Black? Are you fucking kidding me?”

“I thought it amusing. I just tell people I was conceived while the movie was on and they don’t ask any more questions.”

“Of course you do.”

Nine helps him up anyway with a strong grip and an incredibly unceremonious tug of his coat. “You didn’t tell him?” 

Hank glares at him, and his poor heart falls even further at seeing Nine looking nervous for probably the first time ever. He’s invested in the answer, which means…oh, God. He’s not the main character in a story, he’s the side character in a fucking romcom. “Of course I didn’t, but you should. He knows about me, already.” 

Nine relaxes slightly, but still looks somewhat uncertain. “It’s against the rules.” 

Hank huffs. “He’s a good kid, Nine. He doesn’t need somebody in his life if they’re gonna lie to him.” 

Nine casts his eyes down, then they widen. “I mean—you’re making it sound like—it’s not—”

“I’m not an idiot, Nine.”

“You absolutely are. But more to the point, we’re not supposed to…I wouldn’t.” His expression goes a bit lost. Hank so did not fucking sign up for this.

“Not my place to say what you would or wouldn’t do. But you should tell him about yourself. That ain’t a prediction, just the decent thing to do.” Hank rolls his shoulders and they crack in an awful way. “Anyway, being it’s my first fucking day of work, I should probably check in with the Captain like I was meant to do probably five fucking minutes ago. Christ.” 

Nine rearranges his face until it’s something closer to his normal aloof-condescending-amused expression. “He did ask for you. I told him you had an unfortunate case of hemorrhoids and you had forgotten to apply your special cream in your rush to arrive on time.”

He probably didn’t, but it pisses Hank off anyway. He smiles sweetly and asks, “Did we ever hash out whether reapers can die?” 

“Past you asking that same question every time I do something you find particularly irritating, no.” 

He pats Nine way too hard on the shoulder. “We’ll work it out someday. See you, Joe.”

Nine blows him a kiss with an entirely straight face, and Hank mimes catching it from the air and squashing it like an irritating fly. Nine laughs at that, that same blend of delighted he always seems to be when he’s harassing Hank. It’s not as nice a laugh as Con’s. 

Jesus. He was doing so well. It’s Nine’s fault. So many things are Nine’s fault. 

It’s his first fucking day of work. 

Probably he should resign.

Chapter Text

Two weeks after Reaper 800 sends Sumo home with Hank, he sits curled up in an out-of-the-way corner of a construction site. He tries not to look at the body nearby. It might be easier if it weren’t so purposely eye-catching.

Benjamin “Benny” Russell, age 27. Cause of death, blunt force trauma to the head. Administered by the individual Benny had shown up to meet. To purchase drugs, Reaper 800 had overheard prior to the act, but Benny had also mentioned it while cursing out the man, who obviously did not hear him. He was rather busy, anyway, doing something or other with ropes. Reaper 800 knows what that something is, now, but he would prefer not to think about it.

Reaper 800 hates murders perhaps most of all. The clients after them are always sad or shocked or angry or all of those, and they don’t want to leave, but—more than that, it’s just…difficult, sometimes, to see the moment someone sees fit to take someone’s life. And knowing, then, that the murderer won’t always be found. It’s just. Hard for him to understand.

Nine would say he doesn’t have to understand. He’d really like to, though. Maybe it would make it easier.

Maybe he should leave, too, but if nobody else is going to come for Benny for a while, it feels wrong to not at least…be there for him. Just for a bit, even if it’s hard.

He’s caught up in his thoughts, which is perhaps why he doesn’t notice until it’s too late the footsteps creeping near the door, and then someone shouting, “Freeze! This is the Detroit Police Department—” And he does freeze. He’s never responded well to being yelled at. And anyway, it’s not like they can see him.

Except for they can, because it’s Hank, gun pointed in his direction and eyes wide. Reaper 800’s eyes widen as well.

“What the—”

Another person comes in after him, a younger man also with a gun, but he’s pointing it everywhere, eyes straining in the low light before he curses, “Fuck, we missed him again.”

Reaper 800 points hurriedly at his armband, hoping Hank can see well enough right now to see it’s black. Hank shouldn’t be able to see him, is what he means, though he’d also like to make it clear he’s on a job right now and not a murderer.

Hank winces and lowers his gun, but still keeps his eyes on Reaper 800 for a few moments before looking at the body. “Christ,” he says, face falling. “God, this never gets less fucked up.”

“Seriously.” The other guy comes forward, peering at the body strung up to a plus-sign shape on the ceiling with rope like a marionette. “Same signature, obviously.” He pulls out a flashlight to check. “Looks like he got conked on the head like the rest, too.”

The rest? So it’s serial. Reaper 800 sighs and presses a palm to his stomach. He feels sick. Hank glances at him for a split second again, expression going briefly thoughtful.

“Reed, call this in. We’ve already cleared the other rooms, so I doubt the guy’s still on the scene. Most we can do right now is get some techs out.”

“Yeah. Fuck, I need some fresh air anyway.” The man—Reed, he supposes—steps out from the room, and Reaper 800 can hear him starting to talk, voice growing more distant.

Hank looks back at him, crossing his arms. “Fancy seeing you here.” 

“I—he was a client,” Reaper 800 croaks out. 

“Figured. But his soul ain’t around anymore, so why are you still here, then?”

Reaper 800 fidgets, looking down at his feet. “I…return to scenes after…it doesn’t feel right to leave them alone. Or even if there’s someone there, like—I should—see—” He exhales, shaking his head and pressing his lips together.

He can feel Hank’s gaze on him still. “Hm.” The footsteps go closer into the room, closer to the body. “This is the fourth. Whoever it is keeps leavin’ notes with—clues, or whatever, like they fancy themselves some kind of Zodiac Killer or some shit. I was really hoping we’d get here on time for this one.”

“You only missed him by about thirty minutes, I’d say,” Reaper 800 offers in what may be the strangest consolation he’s ever made. “I heard him leaving when I got back.”

“Him?” Hank asks, turning back sharply. Then, as if he just realized, “Wait, you saw this guy.”

“Well, yes.”

Hank brings his hands up to his chin, strokes his beard. “Could you describe him?” 

“I have a photographic memory,” Reaper 800 says, “So I imagine so,” but then he recoils as it finally catches up to him what Hank is asking. “Wait. Hank. I don’t—I don’t even know if that’s allowed.”

Hank is about to say something, but Reed jogs back into the room. “Hey. They’re on the way, ETA is like fifteen minutes.”

“You mind if I get some air too?” Hank asks abruptly. “Just for a couple minutes.” 

Reed looks at him strangely. “I thought you said you’d seen a lot of dead people.”

Hank snorts. “Fucked up is fucked up, kid.”

“I’m not a kid, dickwad.” Reed gestures at the door with his head. “But whatever. I’ll keep an eye.”

“Thanks.” Hank starts to walk out, then gives a meaningful look at Reaper 800. Oh, dear. This probably isn’t a good idea. 

He follows him anyway, to somewhere where they’ll be out of sight from cars even if they arrive. When they get there, he folds his arms again. “You saw him. You’re the only person who saw him. Other than the dead guy in there.” 

“Benny,” Reaper 800 says a bit dazedly. 

“Benny?” Hank’s eyes narrow. “You have a last name too, huh?”

“I—yes, but—” 

“Reaper 800.”

He takes a deep breath and holds it, looks away, frowns.

“Con.” 

Reaper 800 exhales harshly and looks back towards Hank with a pleading look.

“Look, it’s not like knowing his full name is gonna make him any less dead, yeah?”

He squirms, digging his nails into his palms. “Benjamin Russell. He was 27.”

“Good, okay. And the guy who killed him?” 

Reaper 800 shakes his head once more. “I really don’t think this is allowed. How would I even—what, I show up at the police station and say ‘I happened to see a murder and got away without a scratch, draw this man for me?’”

Hank steps closer to him. “I can draw and then use that off the books. You don’t have to get involved officially at all. I’ll find a way to make connections myself.”

“Well—but if I help you find him, and he’s supposed to—do this more—” His stomach goes lead at the thought, and he bites his lip. “Not that I want him to, but—” 

“You guys are all about like, fulfilling fate and all that shit, right? Who’s to say if you help and we find him that’s not just part of his fate?” He takes another step closer.

Everything Hank’s saying sounds like an excuse. He knows that. He knows that, so it really shouldn’t sound that appealing—to, just this once, be able to help the living instead of the dead. He shouldn’t want to do this.

“Look, Con,” Hank says, voice gentle and soft and probably tailor-made to make him feel safe, probably the same voice he uses on reluctant witnesses. It shouldn’t actually make him feel anything, since he knows. It does anyway. “I haven’t said anything, but—the first time we met and the second and especially today, I sorta got the impression that sometimes you feel bad about all this.”

Reaper 800 freezes. Shit. Shit, he’s giving off impressions now?

Hank notices, takes another step forward until he’s directly in Reaper 800’s space and putting two firm hands on either shoulder. “It’s not—I’m just good with shit like that, Con, you don’t need to freak out about it or even confirm one way or the other, and even if you do I’m sure as hell not gonna tell anybody. But I think at least part of you wants to get this guy. I think you’ve seen four hundred-odd years of people dying, and probably a good share of those were people who got hurt by other people that got away with doing it. I think you come back to these places a bit because you feel like you play a part in it and you’re not doing your part after, and this—this could be your part, Con, we could stop him hurting more people if you help me right now.”

Reaper 800 digs his fingernails into his palms further. “Death is a gift they give,” he says quietly. “It is not ours to interfere.”

“Do you believe that?” Hank asks simply, squeezing Reaper 800’s shoulder. He looks him directly in the eyes—not judgmental. Understanding, almost.

Reaper 800 bites his lip again and closes his eyes. “How would I tell you? A drawing would take time to get correct, and if I told you over the phone, that call could be recorded and traced back.”

“You can come visit Sumo.”

So come visit his house, he means, which brings an entirely different feeling to Reaper 800’s chest other than the panic and confusion. Well. Maybe also panic and confusion, a bit. “I…tell me the address. I’ll remember it.” 

Hank grins, sharp and sudden, and Reaper 800 feels happy about causing it at the same time as he feels his stomach sinking down and down and bringing him with it. “115 Michigan Drive. Look, if it’s too much I won’t hold it against you or anything. I get that you reapers have—like, a thing. A lot of things.” His thumb swipes against the collar of Reaper 800’s coat, reminding him that Hank’s hands are still very much on his shoulder, and also very warm. The frenzied feeling that is not panic or confusion grows. “But I think you might be different.”

Reaper 800 steps back in a single, swift motion. Hank’s hands fall to his sides. “I—still have more clients tonight,” he says, the words jumbling together in his anxiety, and he takes another step back and teleports across town, where an old woman is going to die in her sleep without anybody knowing. Later, a man will overdose on prescription sleeping pills from work-related stress. He will sit by each of their bedsides and think, and he will eventually come to a decision.

That decision will, as decisions often do, start the next portion of the story. It will not change its direction; Reaper 800 was always going to make this decision, and has. It is necessary that he decides to help Hank. 

He will not see it as fate. On the contrary, he will see it as heralding in an end, and he will be in part correct. 

But endings are a fate, too, and an ending has always been part of theirs.

Chapter Text

Hank doesn’t feel bad right away. But after the techs come, after they’re allowed to leave the scene and go home for a rest before they have to write up reports and plan their next steps, after he gets in his car and starts driving—then he feels bad. 

Con obviously was really uncomfortable with the idea of stepping in. And, like—maybe Hank does think the guy secretly wants to help. He thinks he’s probably even right about that. But that doesn’t make him an undercover rebel just looking for permission, it still makes him someone who’s been indoctrinated for hundreds of years with reaper ideology. It still makes Hank the big lumbering asshole blundering in and asking him to risk his mental health at best and further punishment at worst, and Hank can have his own set of ideals all he wants, but it doesn’t give him the right to impose them on Con.

Shit. You’d think after eight hundred years he might at some point learn to think for a bit before running his goddamn mouth. Because now Con will probably feel guilty either way, feel bad for betraying the reapers or feel bad for not following his conscience, and Hank put that on him. And—well, Hank does really fucking want to catch this bastard, but he should probably also keep in mind that if he weren’t a freak of nature he wouldn’t even know about Con seeing this guy. He probably wouldn’t know Con at all—just some cute guy at a pet shelter.

Also Hank would be dead, probably.

He wrinkles his nose as he unlocks his door. Okay, he shouldn’t think what-ifs, it gets way too fucking convoluted. The point is it’s a special shortcut most folks wouldn’t even be able to ask for in the first place, which makes it even worse he fucked up this poor guy’s head for it. He should probably apologize. Though—he doesn’t know how to get in contact with him, either. Nine might know but he’s sure as fuck not gonna ask hi—

Con is sitting on his couch, petting Sumo. 

“Christ,” he chokes out, clutching a hand to his heart. “Give a guy some warning, would ya?” Not that he could have; Con doesn’t know his phone number either, and if Hank heard ‘hey, eff-why-eye I’m gonna be on your couch when you unlock that door’ yelled at him from his driveway he’d probably genuinely have a heart attack. But.

Con’s face is inscrutable, and he rises in one smooth movement that has no business looking so attractive, especially in context. Sumo gives only minute protest; Con must have petted him mostly asleep. “Hank.” 

“I—yeah?” Oh wait, he was going to apologize. “Listen, Con, I should—”

“I need you to understand something.” Con’s gaze is intense. “We become reapers because we committed a sin in our past life.”

That—wasn’t what he was expecting. “…Oh?” 

“They never tell us directly, but they intimate. Everybody knows. We are punished for eight hundred years and then serve as reapers for another eight hundred because we committed a sin that deserves that punishment. Any rules that arise from that—they arise because we deserve them.”

Fuck. Control through guilt. Hank has seen a lot of that over the years, and he’s never once liked it. He keeps silent. 

“We don’t interfere because it is not ours to do so. We do not have the right to make that choice. It doesn’t matter if you want to do something different. It doesn’t matter if you want something different for yourself. You don’t get to choose that. You don’t deserve to choose that.” His voice is mostly flat but tinged with the barest edge of desperation. It’s fucking heartbreaking.

“Con…”

“I don’t have a name,” he snaps, and Hank pauses. 

“Okay. Look. What I was gonna say is that I’m sorry for pushing this kind of moral conflict on you. That wasn’t fair of me to guilt trip you like that and I’m sorry I did it and then just kept pushing. I know all this runs deep for you, and—just ‘cause you feel something doesn’t automatically mean you’re gonna act on it. So I’m sorry. But—I’m not gonna say I’m sorry for what I’m about to say, which is that…you have things mixed up about what you do and don’t deserve. Because I don’t know what you did, right? Assuming you did something in the first place. 800 CE, some poor kid in Ireland, I doubt you coulda gotten up to all that much, but whatever. But that—it was a life ago. Tons of lives ago. Humans are supposed to only get up to, like, 122 years max? How many of those have you lived? And you’ve been punished for all of ‘em, and punishing yourself for something you don’t even know about on top of that. Why is that what you deserve? Why do you deserve years and years of bullshit, seeing everybody die and everything change and you’re the only fucking one—” 

He realizes that he’s breathing a bit hard, and also that he still hasn’t learned to control his fucking mouth. He takes a deep breath, looks away from Con, who looks less intense-scary now and more thoughtful-confused. “Nobody fucking deserves that. Nobody deserves to be put in hell and not told why.”

There’s a silence, not a comfortable one, and finally Hank sighs. “Okay. Maybe I will say I’m sorry for that. You don’t need to listen to my bullshit, and you don’t need to tell me who you saw. I know that was askin’ too much.”

“I needed you to understand why I would say no.” Hank nods, still looking away. “But I decided before coming here to say yes.”

…That definitely wasn’t what he expected. He immediately looks back at Con. “Huh?”

“I’ll describe the man for you.”

“I—okay, don’t wanna sound ungrateful, but what the fuck part of any of what you said here led to ‘I’ll help’?” 

“I thought about it. And I don’t—think I deserve to make this choice. But you were…” He exhales through his teeth. “You were right when you said I feel bad seeing without doing. And I don’t think I deserve to make the choice for any of the people who could be hurt, either. So maybe I get punished for this too.” A breathless laugh escapes him at that, almost hysterical. “But I’ve been punished the bulk of my life for a reason I don’t fully understand. At least this I do.”

Hank blinks at him, then cracks a tired smile. “I’m not sure if that’s fucked up or badass.”

Con gives him a small smile back, hesitant. “Probably just foolhardy. Are you up to drawing tonight? I’ve read these these things can take a while, and you’ve had quite an evening, I’m sure.”

“Yeah, I should be fine. Wanna cuddle up with Sumo while I heat some leftovers? I haven’t had dinner yet.” 

Con brightens slightly at the mention of cuddling with Sumo, which Hank had sort of figured and therefore done on purpose. “Yes, please.”

Hank throws an awkward thumbs up and heads for the kitchen to reheat yesterday’s Chinese while Con settles back onto the couch. He can hear him talking to Sumo—“Sorry you had to hear all that nonsense, but you understand, don’t you, you know how it is? In a dog way?”—and barely keeps himself from snorting. He isn’t baby talking like some people do with animals, but the end result is that he’s holding a quiet conversation about apparent shared knowledge of moral quandaries with a dog. It’s…still adorable; he’s not gonna lie to himself about that even if this entire situation is weird as hell. Not really a point to that, ‘cause it’s not going to go anywhere.

He almost thinks it’s part of the conversation with Sumo when Con says, louder than he’s been speaking, “Fried rice.”

“Huh? Oh. Yeah.” When he looks, Con isn’t turned around. “Wait, did you just—smell that?” 

“I have a good nose. That’s not very healthy, you know.”

“I can’t die, who gives a fuck,” Hank grumbles. “Is this why Nine thinks you’re like a dog? I figured it was because you have puppy eyes and—an earnest demeanor, or some shit.”

“Earnest demeanor,” Con repeats with a hint of a laugh in his voice. “He certainly wouldn’t put it that way—I think his words were that ‘I look like if he threw a stick I’d fetch it for him because I’d feel bad he had to walk to pick it up’—”

Yeah, that tracks, Hank thinks. 

“But you’re not entirely wrong. The nose is just part of it. Do you know Nine, then?” 

Hank huffs. “God, I wish I didn’t. He’s an ass. But yeah, we met when I was living in Liverpool in…I don’t know, 1912 or so…and he insisted on bothering me until I moved. Pretty sure I was the first one to call him Nine, now I think of it, except he fucking hated it at the time. Said it was unprofessional. I told him if he hated it so much he could leave me alone, and he stewed for like a month before coming back and pretending like I gave him the nickname because I was into him and twisting everything I said into innuendo—and this was the early 20^th century, mind you, it was a lot fucking harder back then, but he realized it got me riled up so he stuck with it.”

Con is twisted around to look at him now, chin on the top of the couch back and smiling softly. “He must like you a lot. I’m the only one in the area he lets call him Nine, and he made it sound like this big privilege at the time. I actually don’t know if we’re friends though, exactly?”

“What, does he do the thing where he makes it clear he thinks you’re an incompetent idiot? I think that’s just sort of his default.”

Con takes a moment to consider. “At first, and still somewhat, but in a very particular way. Now he treats me sort of like I’m a disobedient preschooler and he’s the PTA mom who has to deal with me eating the blocks instead of becoming a prodigy architect.” 

Hank, who’s just taken his first bite of fried rice, spits it out and starts laughing hysterically. “Holy shit.”

Con grins. “No, like—if I don’t go out with a scarf and hat when it’s cold—”

“Oh my God.”

“He’ll teleport back to his apartment to get one and then spend like fifteen minutes telling me that ‘my conduct proves in multiple ways I have ice in between my ears and he sees he’s finally found an explanation for how it got there’—” 

Hank keeps laughing, head ducking down dangerously close to the rice as he props himself up with his arms. “No, shit, you’re serious?”

“Yes! Or he sends me texts asking if I remembered to meet all of my dietary requirements that day and if I don’t respond within five minutes he sends question marks every two minutes exactly until I answer. Like—sometimes I get busy and forget to eat, but I’m not that bad.”

“That’s fucking amazing. He’s mother henning you except he’s an emotionally stunted rooster.”

“I suppose that’s not an entirely inaccurate way of putting it. I know he means well, really. And…” Con’s face shutters. “Well, he’s a better reaper than I’ll ever be.”

The room feels like it gets colder. It might be; reapers have control over ice. “Con,” Hank says slowly. “I think, uh…well, this ain’t worth much from a stranger, much less a stranger who’s like me, but. I don’t know much about being a good reaper, but I think you’re a good person?”

Con shrugs a bit noncommittally, looking away. It’s not an answer, but Hank guesses he wasn’t really asking a question in the first place. Hank thinks for a moment they might just be doing the awkward silence thing again, but then Con says, “I don’t actually mind that nickname.”

“Oh. Uh…good.” 

“You know how you said I’d be more like a dog lover?” 

“…Yeah?”

“Conchobar.” His tone is musing, and he’s looking up at the ceiling. “They don’t really use that name anymore, as much. If I had another life, though…I wonder if they might’ve called me Connor.” 

“Maybe.” Hank doesn’t exactly know where this conversation is going, but it feels like the right thing to say, “It’s a good name.” 

Con’s head disappears below the couch cushions, and Hank can hear him talking quietly to Sumo when he says, “What do you think? Do you think it’s a good name?” Hank might almost be insulted that he feels like he needs another opinion, except for it’s still cute. 

His voice comes muffled against fur, and Hank has to strain to hear it. “We’re not allowed to have real names.”

He thinks he might have an idea where this is going, now. Con wants another thing he doesn’t think he can have. “Nine has a name for work, yeah? And—we’re about to do some work. So.”

Con makes a considering noise against Sumo’s back, and Hank carefully throws away the takeout box and throws a fork into the sink. Casual. “Might be nice to have some variety when we’re talking.”

Con looks up at him as he settles in on the couch next to Sumo, reaching forward for the sketchbook that he had left there the previous evening. He likes drawing, and it feels—right, in a way. Not for other people to see, though. Just him. He doodles on the corner of a page, still projecting ‘this isn’t a big deal’ vibes, or at least he hopes he is. 

“Connor,” Con says. “The nickname still works then.”

“Sure does.” 

He still looks uncertain, and Hank finally sighs, leaning over to whap him lightly on the head with his sketchbook. “You’re thinking so loud I can practically hear you. Wanna tell me what this asshole looked like, Connor?” 

His face kind of—transforms, then. Not really, not in a weird way, but. Hank thinks for a brief moment, stunned, that he’s not actually sure if he’s ever really seen Con—Connor—really, truly happy before this point. And like, it’s not even that big of a smile, but his eyes are all crinkled up and he looks a bit like he’s glowing.

“He looked like an asshole,” Connor intones, still with that happy-glowy smile, and Hank reminds himself forcefully about the part where this doesn’t go anywhere.

“Okay, well, I can’t take that kind of drawing into work,” Hank says, hoping against hope he doesn’t sound as impacted by that as he was, or that he doesn’t look like he’s swooning when Connor laughs. Which is easier when Connor starts to describe the fucking serial murderer that is the point of this entire fucking thing. Or it’s supposed to be, except for Connor is petting Sumo the entire time and at one point he starts yawning and lays his head back onto one of the couch arms and Sumo crawls up a bit on him and looks all pleased as punch that he’s confined Connor so he can’t leave, and Connor doesn’t seem to care much about leaving either because he just sort of falls asleep right there.

It should be easy for him to wake up Connor and tell him he should get home. It should be easy to look away and put down his sketchbook and not think about how he could sketch this beautiful man who smiles every time Hank calls him by a name he made up for himself just because he likes it, who loves dogs and talks to them like they can respond, who wants to do the right thing even when he doesn’t think it’s the right thing but still thinks he doesn’t deserve anything for himself. All of this should be easy, because Hank hasn’t had much of a hard time disconnecting himself from the world ever since it made it clear he didn’t fit into it in the first place.

But—it doesn’t matter, is the thing, and his mind needs to get with that particular program. He doesn’t even know what this is—a crush, a passing interest, a nothing-at-all—but whatever the fuck it is, Connor doesn’t need it from him. So he’s not going to give it. He’s had way more than enough practice pretending shit doesn’t get to him, after all.

Chapter Text

Reaper 800’s first thought upon waking is this: it had never previously occurred to him that being a criminal might be so exhausting.

His second thought is he’s very warm.

His third is it feels nice.

He’s about fifteen thoughts in before he gets to ‘this isn’t my bed’, and another two before ‘wait fuck I fell asleep at Hank’s didn’t I’. 

“Shit,” he says, and Sumo, who is resting on him, makes an agreeable boofing noise. “Oh, hello, Sumo. Sorry to make you hear that unsavory word so early in the morning.”

“He’s well acquainted with unsavory, I bet,” Hank says from the direction of the kitchen, “So I really don’t think it matters.”

Thought twenty: it smells like pancakes.

“It’s the principle of the thing,” Reaper 800 says, and his heart grows just as warm as he is. Hank’s here. And he’s making pancakes. With chocolate chips, he thinks, sniffing again. It is his house and all—oh, gosh, it’s his house—but…still. He’s allowed to feel pleased about the idyll of it. “Sumo, would you mind if I got up?”

Sumo stares at him, then licks his face. Reaper 800 laughs. “I don’t know how to interpret that, but I think I might need it to be a yes.”

“Bathroom’s in the hallway,” Hank says, voice sounding oddly muffled, like he’s talking behind his hand, maybe. “I’m making pancakes with chocolate chips. You seemed like you might have a sweet tooth.” 

His heart has gone beyond warm and into ‘thrown directly on a bonfire’. He finally manages to extricate himself from Sumo and sits up to rest his elbows on the back of the couch, looking at Hank cooking pancakes with a smile he’s technically aware is softer than it should be. “You presumed correctly.” 

Hank looks over at him, eyes going wide and then—something else. Reaper 800 can’t place the expression, but it makes him feel…something like the emotion from last night, the one when Hank invited him here in the first place. They gaze at each other for a few moments, until Hank coughs and goes back to pancakes. “Yeah. Well. Wash up and then we can eat. I have to get going in the next hour or so.”

Reaper 800 nods even though Hank isn’t watching him anymore and gets off the couch to go to the bathroom. While he’s in there, he looks at his reflection. It’s—more disheveled than he usually allows himself to be around others, which he supposes is what he gets for falling asleep on a couch under a dog. His hair’s natural curl is more obvious when the gel he uses wears off, and he has some hair that’s just sticking straight up, and his cheeks are all flushed from the heat.

And only the heat, he tells himself firmly. Not being in Hank’s house with Hank’s dog in Hank’s bathroom when Hank is outside in an undershirt and boxers making them pancakes with chocolate chips in because he thought Reaper 800 might like them. That has nothing to do with anything. He shakes his head and runs some water through his hair; he won’t be able to gel it properly until he gets home, so he might as well just get the old stuff out and slick the curls back as best he can. His clothes are an utter loss, all wrinkled and awful, but he’ll be teleporting anyway. Nobody other than Hank has to see him.

Hank, who apologized for pressuring him, and who acted (badly) like calling him Connor wasn’t a big deal so he’d feel comfortable, who draws wonderfully and has the loveliest blue eyes and a hesitant smile and who makes him feel like he’s…safe. Protected. 

From what, he thinks for a moment, and frowns. He doesn’t know. It’s just a feeling. He’s been having a lot of confusing feelings. 

“You okay, Connor?” he hears Hank call out, and he startles. Oh. Right. Yes. He splashes water in his face, dries it off, then exits the bathroom.

“Apologies, I spaced out a bit,” he says, and Hank has that something-else expression again. He clears his throat.

“I know how bathrooms are.” Reaper 800 (Connor?) grins, and Hank scowls. “Okay, shut up or no pancakes.”

“Wouldn’t want to risk that.” Reaper 800 (…Connor) sits down at the table as Hank plates the pancakes and gets out some syrup. “You cook?”

He shrugs, sitting down at the table across from…Connor…and passing him a fork. “I can. Don’t bother as much as I used to.”

Connor (!) takes a bite and smiles happily at his plate. “It’s excellent, thank you. Yeah, it used to be a lot more important for us to know how, I suppose. Bachelor in Ireland in the 17^th century, you don’t really have anybody cooking for you.”

“Exactly. Used to get some looks for it, though. God, I’m glad we’re past that point where you’d say you were unmarried and people would give you that look.”

Connor laughs, nodding emphatically. “Really. You decline a few offers to swing by and meet their daughter and you can just see the ‘he never married’ flashing at the end of the obituary they’re mentally writing for you.” 

“Right. Say what you will about people these days, and you can say a lot, but at least they probably aren’t gonna assume much just because you can cook and don’t date.”

For some reason, that puts a pit in Connor’s stomach. “So you don’t date?”

Hank pauses with a bite of pancake halfway to his mouth. “You do?” 

“I—well. No. The—Grim Reaper thing—”

Hank gives a kind of confused half-smile. “Yeah, I mean. The immortal thing?”

“Right.” Connor takes a big slice of pancake and shoves it in his mouth. He might be blushing again, but that’s just because this is awkward. He points at his mouth and then gives a thumbs up, which…doesn’t make it less awkward, because Hank’s smile gets a bit bigger but his eyebrows are still together as if to say for him ‘uh what the fuck’. Which is reasonable. He’s sort of thinking the same thing at himself.

“So serial killers,” he blurts out when he’s finished chewing and swallowing, and thinks ‘what the fuck’ even harder at himself. “You…finished the drawing?” 

“Yeah, think so. Might be good to have you check on it one more time now that you’ve had some rest.”

“Yes. I can do that. I—and sorry for staying. I didn’t realize how tired I was getting.” 

“It’s fine,” Hank says. “If you want to spend the evening getting smothered by a dog, uh—I’m—here.” He laughs awkwardly, scratching his chin.

“I wouldn’t mind getting smothered by a dog again,” Connor says, and immediately washes in self-loathing. Fuck. “Not that it’s like—a thing for me. It’s not. It just wasn’t—it was—” Hank looks amused. Connor covers his face with one hand and mumbles, “You know how I mentioned I’m not allowed around people?”

“I don’t know, I think it’s cute,” Hank says just as Connor’s hand drops, so Connor can see clearly how his face goes horrified as they stare at each other. He’s turning red. Connor is also, and this time it is definitely because of the part where Hank said—it’s cute. He’s cute? Holy shit.

There are some things falling into place right now mentally, some feelings things, and Connor isn’t sure how he feels about the picture it’s making. The picture looks way too much like the beginnings of an ill-advised crush for his comfort, and Hank’s eyes are also way too blue and nice for his comfort.

“Wake the fuck up, I got your fat ass some—ohhhh,” says a voice from the entryway, and they both whip their heads towards it with what are probably equal looks of horror. “Oh. Shit.” 

“Reed, what the hell?” Hank asks, and now is not the time to be fixating on how nice his blush looks even redder.

“Uhhhhhh,” the guy says, and Connor can recognize him now as the man from yesterday. “I—uh. I got you…coffee.” And then, because this Reed man seems to have the same level of social acuity as Connor, “Sorry, man, I’d have better manners except for I’m just shocked this old fuck has any kind of game.”

Connor chokes. “No—I mean—we didn’t—” 

Another person might have left by now to be polite. Reed comes closer. “You look sort of familiar.” His eyes narrow. “Do you know anybody named Joe—”

Hank apparently snaps out of his surprise-induced stupor and screeches, “Reed, holy fuck! I’d say I don’t know what you think happened here but I do and you’re wrong—”

“Uh-huh,” Reed says flatly.

“Connor just fell asleep here—I don’t fucking need to explain myself—”

“Don’t you?” His eyes go to Connor again. “Your name is Connor? Do you know a—” 

“Reed I will tell Joe you want to bone him, don’t fucking think I won’t.”

Connor has no idea what the fuck is happening, but he thinks he might physically be going into shock. 

Reed looks a bit panicky at that statement, but he scoffs unconvincingly and says, “Good, then we both get laid—”

“I didn’t fucking get—Reed I will destroy you—”

“Like you destroyed this twink? Ayy.” 

“Gavin Colin Reed!”

“I am not a twink,” Connor yells, and they both fall silent, staring at him. He continues, incredibly irritated. “I am far, far too old to be a twink, and you are too old to harass your elders for your own amusement.”  

“Elders,” Reed mouths, but Connor ignores him.

“There was no destruction going on at either end at any point except for the slow destruction of my adherence to the rules, but while I may be a criminal—”

“A fucking what?” Reed says, out loud this time. Connor continues to ignore him. Hank winces.

“—I am not the sort to fall into bed with new acquaintances, no matter how nice their eyes are.” He cuts off there. He hadn’t meant to say that last bit. Hank gets even redder, which Connor hadn’t thought was possible.

“Uh,” Reed says after a few moments. “Right.”

“I should leave,” Connor says, standing abruptly. “Hank, where is the thing?” 

“I—I’ll get it for you.” He gets up and dazedly walks to his bedroom.

Connor meets Hank at the entrance to the hallway that includes his bedroom and takes a look at the sketchbook, then gives him another thumbs up. “Perfect.”

“Good. Okay. Uh—hang on a second, actually.” He clears his throat, then flips to another page and takes the pencil he has in the spiral binding and writes a number on it. “Just in case you think of anything else, all right?” He rips the paper out and proffers it in Connor’s direction. “Like…for the thing.”

“Yeah. Of course.” He takes the paper and can’t help smiling a bit when he sees it. “Thank you, Hank.” 

“No, jeez, thank you. I know—” He clears his throat again and looks over Connor’s shoulder at probably Reed. “Yeah. I know. So thanks.” 

Connor inclines his head, then gives Hank a terse double pat on the shoulder. “Cool. Well. Have a good day.” 

“Yup,” Hank croaks, and Connor walks out the hallway, to the couch to pet Sumo, to the door, out the door, and teleports to his apartment before walking to a wall and banging his head against it a few times. 

What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck.

He’d think the gods were getting a head start on his additional punishment already except he knows all too well this is just him. Damn it.

He hadn’t even been able to finish his pancakes.

Chapter Text

Apparently eight hundred years of pretending shit doesn’t get to him isn’t near enough to make him not act like an idiot around Connor. In his defense, it’s at least part Connor’s fault, for having curly hair and sleep-flushed cheeks and for saying he has nice eyes. 

Nice eyes. Connor thinks he has nice eyes. Is that…code? Like, dating code? Is that secret ‘I could date you’ code? Not that. It would matter if it were. Seeing as how Hank had decided that already, about how this doesn’t matter because Connor doesn’t need this from him and also the immortal thing and…the other reasons.

He had smiled when Hank gave him his number.

Is that code? 

“Okay, so, straight up,” Reed drawls, pushing the coffee cup he had brought in towards Hank, “The guy was right that I was fucking with you a bit, but you’re into him, yeah?” 

Hank snatches the coffee cup and gives his best glare. “Fuck you.”

“You deflect when I’m right,” Reed says primly.

Hank sips his coffee as aggressively as possible in non-response. It’s really irritating when Reed is right.

“Also, like, you don’t have to answer, but he’s not human.”

Hank valiantly avoids spitting out his coffee. Reed didn’t even bother phrasing it as a question. “What makes you think that?” he says carefully, reaching for a kitchen towel to dab at his lips unnecessarily.

Reed shrugs. “Few things. One, he said he’s too old to be a twink, and obviously physically that’s a damn lie, which means he’s probably stuck like you. Plus he also said elders, not elder, which implies both you and him, and no way that guy’s older than me unless there’s some hinky bullshit going on. And then he just casual-dropped being a criminal around two police officers, which probably means it ain’t criminal like normal.”

“Uh,” Hank says eloquently.

“And he looks like Joe.” Reed folds his arms. “And no way Joe’s human either.”

Hank should stop drinking the coffee, because now he’s coughing from it going down the wrong tube. Reed raises an eyebrow at him.

“I don’t—” Hank starts weakly, and Reed holds up a hand, rolling his eyes. 

“Please, I’m a dumbass but I’m not a fucking idiot. Joe Black, God. He tells everybody his parents were fucking during that movie so they feel too awkward to say anything else, even if they didn't ask in the first place, but like—what, their last name was already Black and they watched the movie because of that? It’d have to be a rewatch, too, that movie came out in fucking 1998, and Joe doesn’t look 39. And the movie ain’t exactly a mood-setter. It’s fucking depressing. I knew right away he was lying about his name, and I was always suspicious about him specifically choosing the name of fucking Death. It’s exactly the kind of joke he’d find funny if he were actually a—you know, whatever.” Reed handwaves, like the ‘you know whatever’ isn’t important.

“Uh,” Hank says again, because apparently his vocabulary has gone to shit like everything else.

“And then you come in and you’re all pissy about him talking to me, and you say you ‘met a while back’, but you just got to Detroit and Joe had said before he’s been here his whole life, which.” Reed waves his hand again. “Probably a lie too, I’m guessing, but either way his records say that too, and unless he took some field trip to France as a kid, or if he did a stint in Canada, like—yeah.”

“Hm,” Hank says, doubling the list of words he can say right now in one fell swoop.

“Plus you were just talking about that shit while I was listening from a bit away. Not very careful, that. ‘You didn’t tell him?’ ‘No but you should’?” Reed takes Hank’s coffee and looks at him over the rim, taking off the lid to sip from the side with double-raised eyebrows now. “Come on, Hank.”

Hank sighs. “Okay. Fair.”

Reed nods, taking another sip. “So his name is Nine?” 

“Nickname I gave him in the early 1900s.” Hank pauses. “Wait. Wait—Reed, you asked about him even knowing he’s—Reed.” 

Reed’s lips curve behind the cup, and he takes another pointed sip. 

“Oh my fucking God.” 

“Would I be fucking a god?” Reed asks, faux-thoughtful but obviously asking to be a little shit like always. “Are they death gods? Or—”

“They’re reapers, and you’re—Gavin Colin Reed—”

“Using my full name doesn’t work more than once per day.” Reed finishes off the coffee in one gulp and throws the cup in the trash, smirking. “Or ever. Look, he’s hot, and clearly,” he gestures at Hank, “You understand the appeal.”

“Connor is nice.” Hank realizes too late he probably should’ve gone with a denial there or something. Oops.

“Sounds fucking boring, but we all got our kinks.” He smiles placidly. “We should get to work.”

Hank follows him, wordless and with a pronounced scowl. He keeps not talking all the way to the precinct, where he storms into the office while Reed is still parking, walks up to Nine, and hisses, “He knows, it’s not my fault, and you have awful taste.” 

The shocked look on his face is almost amusing until it turns into genuine terror. “You told him?” 

“He figured out, Nine, and before I got here even. Joe Black.”

“Fuck,” Nine says, clearly flustered. “I—that’s against the rules, Hank, they’re not supposed to know about us. But I can’t do a memory wipe without authorization and—to get that I’d have to report the incident to my supervisors—fuck.” He’s pacing back and forth now in a tight little rectangle, and Hank…feels bad about it. Reed already knew, but he wouldn’t have if he didn’t know Hank in the first place, probably— 

“Look, he only found out because he found out about me a long time back, right? One human knowing about the existence of grim reapers through no action of your own isn’t something you need to report.” Hank puts a hand on Nine’s shoulder, and he stops pacing, but won’t look Hank in the eye. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Just—weird situation.” 

“You seem to be involved in a lot of those,” Nine says. He’s still whispering, like they have been through this whole conversation, but his voice has gone dull. His eyes, too. Eventually he sighs. “If…Reed asks. I had a personal emergency.” 

“Whoa, uh—” Shit. He should’ve left this for a better time at the very least. Shit. “I’m sorry, Nine.”

Nine looks at him, then shakes his head, just a short, small motion. “You’re right, this isn’t your fault.”

Sure feels like it, though, when he strides out at a pace that looks like it wants to be a run, and when Reed comes in and asks whether Joe’s coming in today.

He just says no, and Reed’s face falls a bit and Hank tries not to feel responsible for that. He busies himself by trying to figure out how to use the drawing without raising suspicion about where he got it from. Worst case maybe he says anonymous informant, but then they ask how the guy knows, maybe they ask him how he got in contact with him the first place, maybe they ask for better proof. Probably wouldn’t be admissible at any rate.

He takes another look at the guy in the portrait—he took a picture of it on his phone when he finished the evening prior— scratching his chin thoughtfully. Guy looks a bit familiar, was what he had thought when he first saw it, but he can’t place it. Could’ve been someone he saw in passing. Sighing, he gets up to go to the coffee machine, where Reed is already there making another cup of coffee with way too much sugar like he always does, grumbling to himself about fucking reports and fucking killers and fucking weak-ass coffee. His words.

“Half of mine not enough?” Hank jokes limply as he waits behind him. Reed shoots him a glare over his shoulder. 

“All the coffee in the fucking world wouldn’t be enough,” he mutters. “God, I hate whoever this person is. And I hate whoever didn’t put fucking surveillance cameras on their fancy construction site or in any of the nearby streets, fuck them and fuck this bastard and—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Hank says, going for a sympathetic and vaguely patronizing pat on his shoulder, but he sorta turns at the last second, probably to yell, which means Hank’s pinky brushes against his neck. 

Last time Hank had touched Reed, just briefly, he had seen Reed getting a promotion. He looked older, more wrinkly, so he hadn’t thought much about it. Probably a few years down the line; he can congratulate him when it becomes applicable, he figures. 

He doesn’t see a promotion now.

He sees the man from the drawing bumping into Reed at the coffee shop he goes to, and Reed running through an alleyway, and the man with a frenzied expression and—fuck, fuck, fuck. No. No no no.

Reed strung up with ropes to a cross on the ceiling like a marionette.

He staggers back, staring wide-eyed at Reed. “Shit,” he whispers. 

“What?” Reed asks, frowning.

Fuck, no, he can’t let that fucker get Reed. Not—he has a promotion to get in a few years. He has to be alive for that. He has to be alive for years until he dies the grumpy old fuck he was always meant to be which means he can’t die which means—which means—

His mind wrenches away from the implication. He can’t stop people from dying. He can’t die and he can’t stop people from dying, and that includes Reed. 

But if he stopped the guy at the coffee shop…then he wouldn’t be stopping his death directly, right? Just catching the motherfucker before he gets any further. It’s a loophole, maybe, but—

“Hank, for fuck’s sake, what crawled up your—” Reed’s phone buzzes. His eyebrows crease when he pulls it out of his phone to look at it. “God, why is everybody around me weird today?” 

“In what way?” Hank asks breathlessly. When he sits down he can try to remember what he saw. He can—maybe there’s a calendar somewhere in the coffee shop. Maybe he just has to accompany Reed every day from now on. It’s a loophole. It’s fine.

“You don’t fucking get to ask that,” Reed says grumpily, but relents and shows Hank his phone. “Lijah just texted me this.” The screen just says ‘Remember what I told you’.

“What did he tell you?” Hank asks, forcing his voice to stay casual, shoving his hands in his jacket pockets.

“I don’t fucking know! He’s always telling me random shit about like—robotics and—I don’t know, jeez. You know what he’s like.”

Elijah is a slippery guy to be sure. Hank shrugs, and the phone buzzes again.

‘You were going to ask Hank over to dinner with me and Chloe.’

“You were?” Hank shakes his head. “Wait, he’s in the area now? With—what, a girlfriend?” 

“Yeah, moved here a bit back. He and Chloe have been together a few months, I don’t remember.” Reed frowns at his phone. “I don’t remember him talking about dinner either, but. Whatever. My memory’s shit.”

“Huh. Well. I’ll come. Haven’t seen the guy in a while.”

“God, there’s a reason I don’t visit him often, he’s always trying to set me up,” Reed mumbles. “But yeah, okay. I’ll let you know when he decides on a day.” He snorts. “If.”

“Sure.” Hank fakes a smile, probably not well. “You know, I’m not feeling much like coffee anymore. Headache.” 

“I feel that way whenever I hear from Lijah too,” Reed says. “But also I’m still having coffee.” 

Hank throws him a thumbs up and his best sarcastic smile and goes to slump back in his seat. Fuck. Okay. It’s okay. He can find this guy before he does anything. It’s fine. Reed will be fine. They have a dinner to go to and Reed will be fine for it because Hank’s going to make him fine. 

The voice of a god saying death is a gift I give comes unbidden to his mind, and his expression goes sour.

Fuck that noise. If it’s a gift, let every god out there see him crashing their goddamned party.

(Pun very much fucking intended.)

Chapter Text

Everybody has a story, and everybody is part of many stories that are not their own. 

You are a passerby in the street, or perhaps a person seen across the way with whom someone makes eye contact for the barest moment before moving on. You are someone who does something amusing or spectacular in public and who someone tells their friends about when they have a moment to relax. You are someone's friend or perhaps even their enemy, or their family or their partner. You play many roles across many stories, and so it is that you live farther outside yourself than you may sometimes think.

All of this to say: there are many stories not presently being told. They are still out there, of course, but there are far too many stories to number that do not touch on this one, and some whose main characters are reduced to fleeting parts of the story at hand.

For example: Reaper 684-20, who was born as Marcus in Carthage back when it was the center of the Byzantine Exarchate of Africa. He will call himself Markus, and he will later make quite an impact in his own story. He has many friends who will feature heavily in that story—the reapers who will be Simon, North, and Josh—and they all have wonderful stories, but those stories are not this one. 

But they do intersect, and they intersect specifically at this point, when Connor delivers his weekly mission report summary to Reaper 684-20. Reaper 684-20 is not Connor’s immediate supervisor—that responsibility falls to Ms. Stern, who is not a reaper but does hold jurisdiction over all of Detroit—but he’s the group leader of Connor’s district. Reports go to him to be summarized and given to Ms. Stern.

It is an efficient system.

More efficient, perhaps, if Reaper 684-20 didn’t insist on it being a social event every time. He tells them he doesn’t want their interactions to feel like a transaction. Which sounds like something you might see on an office motivational poster, but he’s completely sincere about it. So on the day his reports are due, Connor goes out for coffee with Reaper 684-20, who told him a while back to just call him K. When Connor asked him why, he just smiled with his characteristic calm and said it was a past nickname. 

It’s a nonanswer, and probably not true. Connor very purposely doesn’t read into that out of courtesy—out of the same reason that Nine doesn’t ask when Connor says something just a little out of line. The rules mandate that reapers report whenever there is any suspicion of misconduct, whether it be by them or any other reaper, and failing to report is a punishable offense. But you can’t report what you don’t know. It’s a loophole, of sorts.

Connor sits down at the table with K. Saying they’re there for coffee is somewhat of an inaccuracy. K always gets a mint tea, and Connor gets Irish Breakfast tea with milk. He’s been in the United States for a hundred years, but some habits will never die. (K himself always brings along some pine nuts to put in the tea, which is apparently a Tunisian addition.) They sip calmly for a while before K asks for the report. It’s all very routine. 

What isn’t routine is how he leaves Benny Russell for last, or how he hesitates unnaturally when K asks him, like he always does, how it went.

“…Fine,” he finally says, stirring his tea. “It was fine.”

When he looks back at K, his eyebrows are raised just a fraction. “Are you sure?”

“Yes! Yes, I am sure it was fine.” After all, nothing wrong happened with Benny specifically. “Just—murders are rough. I just. Feel a bit bad for them, is all.”

K’s eyes go thoughtful. Connor fidgets under his gaze. “Reaper 800.”

The designation needles him in the heart, which is wholly inappropriate.

“May I ask why you feel bad for individuals who have been given a gift?” 

Connor stiffens, stops breathing. “I mean—I don’t—” 

K reaches over to his hand and pats it. “I’m just curious, Reaper 800. Whatever answer you have, I won’t report you. After all, I feel bad for them too.”

Connor gulps in air. He needs to remember to look natural. They’re authorized to use their powers to make the other people at the café not hear what they’re saying—or, well, they hear it, but it kind of glances off their mind so they don’t comprehend it—but a look of panic might raise some questions. “I—I didn’t—it’s nothing, Reaper 684-20.” Because that doesn’t sound suspicious at all. “It’s nothing and it went fine and it’s all fine.”

K looks almost amused for a split second before his face turns contemplative again. “Are you done with your tea?”

“Yep. Definitely.”

“Would you mind going somewhere with me for a moment?”

Connor must look horrified, because K laughs. “No—this isn’t—this isn’t some government kidnapping situation, Reaper 800. I just thought we might go somewhere a bit more private.”

“Are you sure about that kidnapping thing and how this isn’t that?” Connor says weakly, and he laughs again.

“Very. You’re welcome to stay behind, if you like. I won’t fault you for it.” 

Connor sighs, running a hand through his hair, biting his lip before making a decision. He probably can’t make things that much worse, and maybe compliance is the best idea here. “Okay. Fine.”

K smiles and gets up smoothly, holding Connor’s hand and dragging him into a nearby alleyway. He’d be more worried than he already is if he didn’t know physical contact was required for co-teleportation, and obviously they can’t do that in public. They end up in an apartment Connor’s never seen before. 

Connor spends a few moments looking around, incredibly confused, before he hears a voice calling out, “Markus? I wouldn’t have expected you back yet.”

Markus? Connor blinks rapidly, and footsteps come down a nearby hallway and into the room. The person freezes—except it’s not exactly a person at all. “Reaper 923-74?” Connor asks uncertainly. He’s another reaper in the district, but Connor hasn’t had much interaction with him except in large group assignments.

The other reaper looks at K with wide, shocked eyes, clearly just as horrified as Connor was just a few moments earlier. K raises his hands in a placating gesture. “It’s okay, Si. I’m almost sure of it.” 

“Almost?” Reaper 923-74 squeaks incredulously.

K turns to Connor. “I’m sure you have questions.”

That’s an understatement, almost comically so. “A few,” he ekes out.

“I hope you understand I’m taking a big risk by inviting you here and by saying what I’m about to say. I don’t think you’ll report us.”

“Holy shit,” Reaper 923-74 says miserably, walking over to the couch and sinking down into it. 

K gives him an apologetic look, then goes back to Connor. “But if you do—well, we’ve understood the risks from the beginning, I suppose. Now. What you mentioned—about feeling bad for the people who die. About feeling bad for the part you play in that. In…perpetuating a system you don’t exactly understand and can’t always agree with, maybe? That’s something we’ve all gone through.” 

“We?” Connor croaks, wishing he could sink down onto the couch too. That would probably be rude, though social convention doesn’t exactly seem high on K’s lists of priorities at the moment.

“Me, Simon…some others.” He called Reaper 923-74 Si, so that’s probably Simon. “It started when I fell in love.”

“You’re very embarrassing,” Simon mumbles from the couch, head up against his knees, the picture of despair.

K gives him another glance, but this time fond, undeniably so. “I started having feelings for Simon some time ago—years, really. It eventually became clear that Simon felt the same way, but we knew that relationships, even between reapers, were forbidden. But we couldn’t understand why. We didn’t know why something as beautiful as love would be prohibited by the gods, even if we’re supposed to be punished.” His face twists a bit at that. “So after a lot of thought and a number of bad nights, we both decided that trying to be together was worth whatever punishment we might receive.” 

This sounds…eerily similar to his own situation, except. Minus the love, obviously, not with Hank. Just the. It being worth it thing. Moving on. 

“So we kissed each other.”

Simon groans into his knees, but K just looks at Connor expectantly, like there’s an answer he’s supposed to be giving right now when he wasn’t even aware there was a question being asked. 

“I…congratulations?” Connor says, confused.

K snorts. “Thank you. But that’s not my point. What are the two rules about contact?”

Connor’s eyebrows crease. “If you touch a human, you see their past lives; if you kiss one, their memories of past lives return. We’re supposed to avoid both.”

“Right. And touching other reapers doesn’t let you see their past lives. But kissing…” K spreads his hands in a kind of shrug. 

Connor gapes. “You—wait. You’re saying you have your memories back? Both of you?” 

K nods emphatically. “For some reason it works. Some kind of loophole. I remember everything, Reaper 800. And so does Simon.”

“You—” He inhales, holds the air in his lungs until he feels lightheaded. “Even what—we’re being punished for?” 

K’s face does that twist again, but bigger. “Yes. Even that.”

“Holy fuck,” Connor breathes. “I—what is it? Is it the same for everybody? What did we do?” 

K looks down, taking a deep breath. “I think that’s something you deserve to find out for yourself,” he finally says. “But it is the same for everybody, and me and Si and the others, we believe that our punishment isn’t commensurate with our crime. So we’ve been—meeting. To try and figure out how we could make some kind of change. We all took back our right to have names. Simon’s name was Simon, so he kept that. My name was Marcus, with a ‘C’, and I lived in Carthage, and I had—an entire life, and now I have a new life too here with Simon, so I chose to be named Markus with—”

“A ‘K’,” Connor says, suddenly understanding. He had asked him to call him ‘K’ months ago. 

“Exactly. Same but also not. Some of our others have chosen entirely different names from what they used to have, but—the point is, we get to choose. We get to choose whether to remember, whether to keep our names or change them, whether to have names. Because we have that right. We have the right to know how we got here, and we have the right to choose where we go next. And—and maybe I’m wrong and you leave here and report all this. But I felt like you might want to choose too, Reaper 800.” 

He feels too full and empty all at once, a cosmic oxymoron contained in one body. This is—this is rebellion. This isn’t just one reaper taking advantage of a gray area in the rules, this is multiple reapers flagrantly disregarding them. And—and he should be panicking about that. He is, actually. He is for sure definitely panicking. But it’s part panicking about this coup that he’s been dragged into against his will and also panicking about how one of the first things he thought when he heard the reaper’s kiss worked on other reapers is—what if Hank, too, since he's not exactly human either.

Hank’s punishment was given by the gods. And Connor doesn’t have the right to think he knows better than them, right? But—hasn’t he sort of already? He helped Hank. He…gave himself a name. He lied to K—to Markus. He’s not reporting Markus now.

He doesn’t think he will.

“Connor,” he whispers, coming to another mental decision, and not one he’s entirely comfortable with.

“Pardon?”

“I—I’ve been calling myself Connor.” He squirms under Markus’ sudden, bright smile. “Since, um, I mean…since this morning, but, uh.” He chews on his lip. “And I helped an immortal man who works at DPD draw a portrait of the person who killed Benny so he could maybe catch him before he killed somebody else. That one was. Last night. So.”

“But you don’t have your memory back?” Simon asks, knees finally down, leaning forward. 

“I—no.” 

“If you want, we could probably find someone willing to give you a quick kiss,” Markus offers. “I can ask—” 

Connor holds up his arms in front of him in the shape of an X, backing away. “Nope! No. No, thank you.” 

“Don’t you want to know?” Simon inquires.

Yes. Also no. Both, but—he wants kissing someone to be more special than just…some random person. Which is old-fashioned, maybe, but he died one thousand two hundred thirty-eight years ago. He thinks he’s earned the right to be old-fashioned.

Hank comes to mind again. He shoos him out.

“I—I’ll think about it. But not now. I just—this is a lot.” He shakes his head, fingers tapping at his leg nervously. “I won’t…I won’t report you. But this is just. A lot.”

“I understand,” Markus says. “I’m sorry to put all this on you at once.”

Connor attempts a smile. “It’s—” The ‘fine’ dies on his lips, and he ends up just shrugging, and he knows the smile is more a grimace. “I’m going to go home now.” 

“All right. Be well, Connor.” 

This situation is so wrong, and so far from anything Connor could ever have imagined or would even have wanted to imagine, but the name still feels right. He tries to tell himself that’s a good sign, but it doesn’t feel like one.

He teleports back to his apartment, because he needs to get at least a few more hours of rest if he wants to be sharp for his shift tonight, and also because his apartment feels safest. He sets alarms, changes into pajamas, and closes his eyes to a chorus of anxious what-ifs and the irritably persistent thought of how Hank might react if he asked to kiss him. He wonders if he might blush again. He wonders if he might actually…do it. 

He wonders if it might feel right like his name does, if he did.

When sleep comes, it comes as a relief from both the what-ifs and the wondering that he really shouldn’t be doing, and at least a temporary relief from the truth that when he wakes up he’s going to have to make some kind of decision about what he is now that he’s floating unmoored in a lake that he has no idea how to navigate.

Chapter Text

Hank looks at the list he's created of clues from what he saw when he was touching Reed and scowls. He knows that the coffee shop is in the morning, but not what day it is, because apparently fuck paper calendars nowadays. He knows the alleyway is later because it was dark. He knows the…final event…is in someplace damp and dark and unsavory and that whoever was there last apparently had a hankering for McDonald's in a major way and was raised without knowing about trash cans, because the wrappers are fucking everywhere. Disgusting. But they've always known this guy doesn't really have a preference for aesthetically pleasing dump sites, which is pretty obvious because those would be higher risk, and the guy's a coward.

A coward, but smart. It pisses Hank off. He looks back at the list. No date indicators. No location other than the coffee shop, which means the coffee shop is going to be his best bet and probably his only bet. God. Hours of work and brainstorming and he's just got this tiny fucking list. It's really kind of unimpressive. What goddamn use are special powers if they can't save Reed? (Or get the guy first. Loophole, and all.)

He's racking his mind for whether it'd be legal to set up cameras in the shop beforehand—maybe the guy's a regular--and kicking mulishly at the floor upon realizing that there's no way it's legal without a good explanation and he doesn't have one, fuck, when his phone buzzes. He takes it out of his pocket and glares at it, not because it did anything but because this entire fucking day is a crapshoot.

"This is Connor," reads the text, and Hank immediately straightens somewhat in his seat. Which is dumb, because it's a text, not a fucking video call. "I thought it might be useful for you to have my number as well."

So, business—which—uh, of course it is, duh. They don't…have a non-business relationship. Yet. Or ever. "good thinking" Hank replies, which seems asinine the moment he says it. "your day gone ok?" Even more asinine. God.

He doesn't have time to continue beating himself up for word choice, though; Connor responds after a few moments. "It certainly could have gone better, all things considered. But thank you for asking."

"i feel that" Hank says asininely, like an ass. "and uh i guess all that this morning probably didn't help huh? sorry about reed, he's a dick" Fuck! Fuck, why is he bringing up this morning? This morning was awful. Well. The part before Reed wasn't. But everything after, definitely.

"It was, I suppose, an understandable conclusion to draw," Connor concedes while Hank has a minor cardiac event. "If misinformed. And obviously it was rude of him to insist on it. I can tell it was ultimately good-natured ribbing, though, so I won't hold it against him."

"oh no definitely hold it against him," Hank says, throwing Reed a dry look that he doesn't acknowledge. "i have like nineteen running grudges against the guy and he deserves all of them. he's my godson but i take no credit in him being raised to be such an asswipe"

(He and Reed are both well and completely aware that Hank wasn't the best role model to have in his formative years, and that it probably did have at least some kind of impact on him being such an asswipe. Reed only brings it up when he is interested in Hank kicking his ass, which is rarely.)

"Your godson? I suppose that explains why you're so close."

"we're not close fuck you" Hank shoots back on instinct, then winces. He's just digging himself hole after hole here, isn't he. If he connects them all he can make a nice grave and lie in it and scream into the dirt. "uh sorry not like actual fuck you." Oh my fucking God. Hank buries his face in his hands and miserably types "sorry. we've known each other for a while i guess yeah"

"He knows about you, then?"

Oh, fuck. Right. Hank had almost forgotten, with everything with Nine, that Reed made the connection about Connor as well. He should probably say something, right? Like, morally? Even if Connor freaks out too? Hank wishes idly that he had a normal life with normal problems, not problems like 'oh sorry my godson by way of immortality knows you're a Grim Reaper'. Wouldn't that be nice.

"uh yeah. and i should probably say it now, he sorta connected the dots that you're not human either?"

It's a full five minutes, during which Hank rests his forehead on the desk and Reed kicks his knee and asks if he's ever going to do some fucking work, until Connor responds "Oh."

Hank guesses 'oh' is about as good a reaction as he can hope for here. "sorry"

"I mean, that's just sort of how this day is going, isn't it," Connor says, and Hank snorts despite it probably being inappropriate for the conversation. Reed kicks him again. Hank kicks him back.

"sometimes days are sorta like that, yeah. today i found out reed is going to get killed by the serial killer from last night if i don't get him first for example"

"Oh," Connor says again, which continues to be fair. "That's not good."

Hank snorts again, then starts giggling helplessly against his desk. It's probably the stress finally getting to him, the restless sleep he had, or maybe just how fucking hilarious it is to hear somebody come back with 'that's not good' after you tell him you're trying to prevent the death of your police partner and godson, but he can't keep the laughter at bay. Reed throws his hands up in the air and goes to the coffee machine. God, if only he knew.

"yeah," Hank finally says back. "really isnt"

"I'm sorry. I'll continue brainstorming on my end. I wish there's something more I could do."

It's a platitude, but a kind one. Hank smiles a bit at his phone before drawing back, eyes narrowing. Wait.

Isn't there something he can actually do? Reapers can go invisible. And, well, Reed would probably throw a hissy fit if Hank tried to escort him to the coffee shop every morning, but if there were an invisible reaper reporting back to Hank…

"connor" he types out hurriedly. "actually there might be something you could do and it's another big favor but i feel like i have to ask anyway yknow? just to try"

"What is it?"

"the guy is first gonna bump into reed at this coffee shop he goes to every morning but idk what day. still the same season though so i imagine next few weeks. and reed will flip if i tell him i need to follow him without giving him a reason why buuuuuuut if the person checking up on him is invisible…"

Connor doesn't say anything for another handful of minutes, and Hank has already gone back to his list by the time his phone buzzes again. "I'm sure I don't need to tell you that's also against the rules."

"figured" Hank says, because it's not a no.

"But…he's important to you?"

Hank stares at his phone, then sighs. "yeah i dont like to admit it but…yeah. he is. he's stuck with me even when he got to know me which is more than i can say for most people"

The response takes an hour. Hank has gone back to his list and then into the actual files to do some actual fucking work, as per Reed's very vocal request. But his phone does buzz again, and when he snatches his phone from the desk to read it, it says, "Text me when he tends to go to the coffee shop. I can pop in for a little bit every morning. One of those days, and all."

"oh my god thank you," Hank types with shaky fingers. "thank you so much i owe you thank you"

"Is this one of those contexts in which someone might normally call me a lifesaver?" Connor sends.

Hank gazes at the screen, then gives a small, breathless laugh. God. It's weird that a shitty pun is the thing that does it, that finally gets him out of the place where he's been telling himself relentlessly that this can't be a crush. He's got a crush whether it can be one or not. Which doesn't mean anything will come of it still, of course, but it's dumb of him to keep pretending he's not feeling anything when Connor is…like this. Kind and curly-haired and sweet and anxious and still making dumbass puns to defuse tension.

"this isn't any kind of normal," Hank says. "but you are definitely saving my ass"

"Oh, good. It would be a shame if your ass weren't around anymore, after all."

Hank dies peacefully at age who-the-fuck-knows in Detroit, Michigan, in a police station. 

"I mean because. You said—it's important for sitting, you see, that part, so it would be. Unfortunate. If you"

There's a few moments, then Connor adds a meek, "How about we both just accept I have a propensity for shoving my foot in my mouth and move on without discussing any comments I may have made about your ass in the misguided pursuit of humor"

Hank's ghost, who is apparently even less eloquent than his previously alive counterpart, says, "dealio", and then slumps over on his chair. Reed informs him, rather snippily, that he's sent over at least three reports that could pertain to another case and that if Hank doesn't get back to work in the 'next fucking millisecond', he's going to test for himself whether Hank's inability to die prevents him from being castrated. (This is the polite version.) Hank tells him with equally polite language that if he gets anywhere near his genitalia he will personally flambé Reed's entire wardrobe. Reed says he will flambé Hank's mother. Hank says Reed probably has a fundamental misunderstanding of what the word 'flambé' means. Reed does a web search, then flips him off and says 'sure, that too'.

Charming boy. Hank is glad he's trying to save him.

(He is. That isn't sarcasm. Because attachments might be unwise, and Hank might know that better than anyone, but he can't stop himself being attached to Reed any more than he can stop himself being attached to Connor. Unwise on both counts, but Hank has never said he's wise.

And maybe that's why he texts Connor one last time before getting back to work, asks him if there's any way he can thank him properly. Not like a date, which he doesn't specify but knows doesn't even need specifying. Just like—just like a way for him to spend more time around Connor, really. Unwise.

But he can't stop himself from wanting to see him again, either.)

Chapter Text

Connor would have, in fact, immensely appreciated some specification about whether Hank thanking him is a date or not, because he's panicking a small amount. For multiple reasons. Because Hank going on a date with him wouldn't be allowed, but also he'd kind of like to maybe anyway, and also because he doesn't know how to act on a maybe-not-date or how to dress or anything and it really would have been rather helpful if Hank had just come straight out and said, "This is a date and the dress code is smart casual", or…whatever.

He supposes, for a split second, he could ask. He then quickly stops supposing that, because that would just be more awkward if Hank hadn't intended it to be anything datelike. He wonders for an equally brief moment whether, perhaps, the reason that reapers are prohibited from dating is simply because they're all just very bad at it.

Connor is reminded miserably of Markus and Simon and shoots down that idea as well. It's probably just him, then, that's bad at dating. Or not-dating.

Shit.

Connor had texted him a few minutes after that, said 'sure that sounds nice' or something equally mindless, but Hank hadn't read it. Probably working, and Connor has to prepare for work himself anyway. Small kindnesses: there are no murders for him to deal with tonight. He doesn't think he'd be in a good place mentally for that, not after everything from yesterday evening.

Or everything from this morning.

He thinks of what Markus said as he waits for his first client. There's a whole group of reapers with their memories back trying to make change—information that he's now privy to and complicit in concealing. Nine would be so disappointed in him if he knew how far he had fallen in such a small amount of time. It feels almost like he was just waiting for the opportunity. He didn't work too hard to convince Hank or Markus not to involve him, after all.

He also said that all of these reapers believed that their punishment wasn't commensurate with their crime. They all know what it is. He isn't completely certain whether he wants to know it too, now. Not because he isn't curious. He's absolutely curious. But—if he were to find out, and if he were to agree with them. If finding out were to make him rebel even further.

How much further down does this pit go, and how long is he content to climb down it?

He sighs into his knees and stands as the monitor keeping track of the client's heart rate flatlines. They won't be able to resuscitate him, Connor knows, because the client appears next to him after a few moments, looking confused and then crumpling to the ground, shaking his head repeatedly.

"It was supposed to be a routine procedure," he whispers. "I was supposed to help my mom make dinner."

"I'm sorry," Connor says, which is true. The sound of the doctors and nurses talking over each other is muted in the background. "But there's another place you have to be now."

He's crying, still shaking his head, and Connor thinks that when he comes back here, he will probably see his mother crying too.

"Terrence," Connor says softly, holding out his hand to pull him up. "I'm sorry. We have to go."

He gets up without Connor's help, clutching his arms around himself, and Connor takes a moment to rearrange his hurt expression before opening the way to the garden. It is sunset, as always, and it is lovely, and Connor feels a wave of revulsion wash over him at seeing it. What happens here is not beautiful. What he has to do every day is not—

These are not good things to think, Connor reminds himself as he leads Terrence to the bench and waves the cup out of nothing. These are not safe things to be thinking.

But he knows, too, that he's always been thinking them somewhere regardless. He's just never allowed himself to think it quite so loudly.

"When you drink this, you will forget your past life so that you can be ready for whatever comes next. I would advise that you do. It is a gift they give," Connor says, and does not believe a word of it. Terrence looks out from the direction they walked in here, but he can't see anything but more picturesque trees and a beautiful sky.

"So this is where all my work ends up, huh," he says, and looks down at the cup. "Thirty years of busting my ass, gone in a second." He laughs harshly and shakes his head again, just once. "Guess that's how it goes."

He downs the cup in one gulp, and when Connor tells him to walk over the bridge, he does it with his eyes trained on the ground. The light flashes, and Connor goes back to the hospital room to watch Terrence's mother weeping over him. He makes it a minute before he can't take it and leaves for the next client.

He's made it this far believing that this is necessary. That he'd done something so terrible that he unabashedly deserves all this pain every night, that he deserves seeing people having to leave everything and everyone they love behind because he had done something unforgivable. And he'd told himself death is a gift because he had to comply to get through, he had to pretend to believe it to keep going.

But if they all hadn't done something that deserves this, how does he manage?

He goes through the next few clients on autopilot, and when Nine shows up for a freeway accident looking just as solemn and downtrodden, they don't say anything to each other at all. He doesn't even bother going back for the aftermath of that one. He knows what it looks like, and he knows it doesn't look like people who have been delivered gifts. He just wraps himself up in his bed and buries his head in his pillows and falls asleep like that, restless and sad and full of doubt.

When he wakes up, far past the time he normally would in the morning judging by the sun in the sky, he reaches for his phone only to realize that it's dead. He hadn't taken it out of his pocket to charge it. He frowns and plugs it in, making himself some tea from the collection of bags in his small kitchen while it gets enough charge to turn back on. When he does, he's met with several texts. Someone at the shelter asking if he's sick—damn, he hates lying, but he can't really explain himself well here—and Nine telling him to get some food and rest. And Hank.

He stares at the unopened conversation for a few seconds before tapping it.

"oh good. we can work out details later, just whenever"

"or actually like"

"maybe tomorrow? is that ok?"

"if not that's fine"

"more than fine"

"uh"

"i guess you're working probably"

"so just let me know and all"

"when you got time"

"reed's off tomorrow so you don't have to check in on him by the way"

"so yeah don't need to worry about that"

"god why do i keep texting you when you're busy"

And then, several hours later, late into the night:

"orrr mayebe youre jusut like. notowanting totlak"

"whichisis aok"

"whotheufuck woudld wanntnt to tlakit otome"

"immmabotoring oldlfufuck atftetr alll"

"andyrorue lieke………………………..Pretyy"

Connor smiles despite everything at that, drawing his knees up to his chest and resting his head on them. Hank thinks he's pretty. At least when he's drunk, anyway. That's…something. He doesn't know what kind of something, but he thinks, ultimately, probably a good kind.

He texts back, "I do want to talk to you, but I was indeed working. My apologies. Would you be averse to lunch today? I ended up falling asleep before I could have dinner, and if I'm not mistaken there's a nice café not too far from the police station."

A few minutes go by before Hank's response: "aw fuck i'm sorry for drunk texting you and for…yeah", and then, "lunch sounds good. text me the name of the place. lunch break starts at 12:30"

"Of course. I'll see you then, Hank." He looks up the name of the café he'd been thinking of and sends it. He hesitates to add the next bit, but really, what does he have to lose here? "I'll be looking forward to it."

And it's definitely a good something when Hank responds after a few moments, "me too".

Connor leaves the bedroom and makes himself another cup of tea, but it takes about halfway through it before he realizes he's just committed to Schrödinger's Date today, in two hours, when he still hasn't showered or decided what to wear or anything, and it takes the full cup of tea before he stops cursing himself out in Irish. He showers and decides after some careful contemplation that there's no earthly way a suit isn't too much for a lunch maybe-date, linen or no, especially in the fall. He has some lovely cardigans that it's cold enough to use. Cardigans are Schrödinger's Dressy, right? Not too much for a café but not too underdressed for a potential possibly-date?

Right. It'll have to be, honestly, because he's running out of time and way too much of his closet is on his bed and if he leaves it there it'll almost certainly wrinkle and then he'll have to spend ages ironing because he's indecisive and romantically (????) inept.

He dresses with enough time to do last checks and to teleport a few blocks away in a convenient alley so that he doesn't look suspicious. The day's breeze is nice enough, too, nice enough that he can concentrate on it and how it feels against his hands instead of the who-the-fuck-knows-date and his existential crisis and how he's not entirely certain still whether he should have worn some kind of neckpiece, like a tie or a bowtie or a...cravat. 

Probably not a cravat, at least. Those went out of fashion some time ago, which is good because they were uncomfortable.

The breeze and thinking derisively about cravats is enough to get him to the café, and he waits outside until it's—well, past 12:30, but if the break only started at 12:30 then it makes sense it would take some time to walk. At about 12:36 he sees Hank walking quickly from down the street, with his hair in a ponytail and what looks suspiciously like a trimmed beard. Connor can't help but smile, raising his hand in a little awkward wave, because he still doesn't know if this is a date, but Hank clearly felt it was important enough to warrant cleaning up a bit either way.

Hank smiles back and speeds up until he's reached Connor. "Hey," he says, voice a bit rough—probably from the exercise, if Connor had to guess. "Sorry to keep you waiting."

"It was no problem." Connor pauses, chewing on his lip, then offers, "You look...nice." That's somewhat of an understatement, honestly; his shirt is navy and brings out his eyes, and hair pulled back is a good look on him.

"Oh," Hank says, sounding surprised, but he gives a little pleased grin all the same. "Uh, thanks. You—you too."

Connor ducks his head to hide his own smile, heart fluttering unevenly in his chest. "Thank you. Um. So...food." He gestures uselessly at the door, and spares another few mental Irish curses at how dumb that sounded. 

"Right," Hank echoes. "Food."

They stare at each other for a few seconds, then Connor nods jerkily and pushes open the door. Fuck. If this isn't a date, he doesn't even want to think about how utterly hopeless he would be on something that was. But—he wishes this were. Hopes it is. Wants it to be.

Guess the only thing for it is to open the box and see what happens.

Chapter Text

This has been a weird-ass day, and it doesn’t look like it’s gonna get any less weird. Nicer, maybe, at seeing Connor waiting all nervous in a cardigan, but not less weird.

Weird starts with an alarm he doesn’t remember setting waking him up for a shift at the station he doesn’t have, and increases in weird when the alarm is actually a text from Connor. He looks over the texts he had sent last night before he looks over Connor’s, pressing his face into his pillows to groan briefly at his lack of discretion. Pretty. God. He’s surprised Connor is texting him at all. 

But he is, and even more, he’s proposing lunch. Lunch, which is—way too soon, with how Hank is feeling, and it’s a cop-out to go along with Connor’s assumption that he’ll be at the station, but at least it gives him some time to sober up properly and maybe pick out an outfit that sort of matches. Not because this is a date, because it’s not, but because, you know. Just because. Politeness or something, probably. 

(He trims his beard also because politeness, and wears that navy shirt in the shade people have said makes his eyes pop because of the same reason, and puts his hair in a ponytail because he doesn’t need to have a reason to pull his hair back, it’s his own goddamn hair and that’s just—how it is. Yeah.

God, he’s reaching.)

He walks out the door to his front house and out some other door close enough to the café that he won’t have to run, because he’s definitely on the late side of things by now, but far enough that Connor won’t be able to tell he’s not coming from the police station that he heavily implied he’d be at. And then, after a bit of power-walking, he sees Connor.

Who is also—sort of dressed up, maybe. Could just be Connor. But the little smile and wave, that’s definitely Connor, and he’s smiling back before he even thinks to stop it. 

Weird. Weird to be going on this not-date with someone who’s acting a lot like he thinks it might be. Weird that he’s acting like it could be, too. Weird that he’s in this whole fucking situation.

But—when Connor compliments him, when he ducks his head and his cheeks tint with a light pink, yeah. Nice too. Weird and nice. Guess that’s just sort of how things are lately.

They go into the café to get lunch. It’s Mediterranean food, some hole-in-the-wall place, and Hank wonders vaguely whether Connor has been here before or heard of it or—just looked up places near the police station. 

“All of the dish names are in Greek,” Connor murmurs, eyebrows knitting. “Sorry, I’ve never actually—Nine goes here sometimes.”

Ah. That answers that question. Hank looks at the menu, scratching at his beard thoughtfully. “I, uh—I mean, I know the Greek alphabet, but I feel like—the pronunciation I’m thinking of is confusing. I think I can suss it out anyway, hang on.”

“You know Greek?” 

Hank pauses, reflects, frowns. “Version of it, I guess.” Which—he guesses he sorta knew, he’s seen Greek before, but he hasn’t thought hard about it.

“I suppose you’ve been to a lot of places,” Connor offers up, possibly because Hank is still frowning. Hank shakes his head and returns to trying to figure out the menu. They end up just going off the ingredients anyway.

They order, and Hank dithers for a bit before asking, “So, uh. Your day wasn’t—great yesterday?”

Connor winces visibly. “Oh. No. No, it wasn’t.” 

Hank plays with his napkin awkwardly. “You—wanna talk about that at all?”

Connor steals a glance at him, then looks at the wall. “Well. I learned something…distressing.”

“Like how?”

There’s long pause, during which Connor chews on his lip in a way that’s rather distracting, before he says, “Okay, I’m going to scramble this conversation. I have an acquaintance. Another reaper in the district. He caught onto some of my concern about my duties and he took me aside to inform me of some things. That—” He glances briefly at Hank again. “Some of the reapers discovered a method by which they can recall their past lives.”

“Holy shit,” Hank says, surprised, leaning forward on his elbows. “Seriously? Did you do it?” 

Connor goes a sudden, bright red. “No!”

“…No,” Hank echoes, confused and maybe a bit captivated by that red.

“No, I mean—I didn’t—I wouldn’t, you know, unless—” He huffs, folding his arms. “Goodness. No. Anyway, apparently they also recalled the crime for which they were punished, and they think that the punishment isn’t appropriate. So they’re brainstorming about how to change that.”

“Hell yeah,” Hank says, nodding approvingly. “Stick it to the man.” 

Connor looks a bit scandalized at that.

“But they didn’t tell you what that crime was?”

“They said it was something I should find for myself,” Connor mumbles, eyes downcast. “And, well.”

Hank’s eyes narrow as he leans forward even further. “What’s the big deal that you’re so embarrassed about it? Is it some kinda—what, sex ritual?”

Connor goes from scandalized to horrified, his hands clapping over his face. He squeaks, “I should hope not!” 

“So?” Hank isn’t gonna admit that it’s kinda fun teasing him, but it is. And—cute. He can admit that, anyway.

“I mean. I—well. Okay. There are two things we’re not supposed to do.”

“Only two?” Hank asks dryly, and Connor lowers his hands a moment to glare at him before continuing.

“If a reaper touches a human, they can see their past lives. But if a reaper—if they were to kiss an individual, that individual would regain the memories of their past lives.”

Hank blinks at Connor, then says, dazed, “Well, fuck.”

Connor nods quickly. “We were under the impression that would only pertain to humans, because a touch doesn’t work on other reapers. But—a kiss does, apparently.” Hank can barely see his cheeks going an even darker red through his hands. “Which means, you see, that I should probably inform you that it could potentially be to your benefit also.” 

“To kiss you,” Hank says faintly, wondering if he actually woke up this morning or if he’s still in some kind of alcohol-induced fever dream.

“To kiss a reaper,” Connor corrects, somewhat unconvincingly, given he’s still doing his best impression of a beet.

“I mean, you’re the only reaper I know who,” Hank gestures vaguely. “Has broken a rule here or there.” Hank is trying to compartmentalize all this, not attach this conversation to either ‘holy fuck I could get back my memories’ or ‘holy fuck kissing Connor’, but he’s not sure how good a job he’s doing given he feels kind of like he’s floating somewhere on the ceiling. His mind, that is. He could actually float on the ceiling physically if he were so inclined, which he isn’t at the moment.

Connor deflates, his hands falling from his face. Sounding a bit miserable, he says, “That doesn’t mean I can just—that’s like saying you’ve already jaywalked a couple of times and robbed a convenience store so you might as well murder someone also.”

Hank stares at him. “Are you saying kissing me would be like murdering somebody?”

Connor falters, drooping back into his seat, eyes wandering back up to the pictures on the wall. “I mean. No. No, not exactly.” 

“Not exactly.”

“Probably more pleasant,” Connor murmurs thoughtfully, and Hank’s compartmentalization flies entirely out the fucking window along with any handle he had on this situation whatsoever.

Connor freezes, going so stiff it’s almost funny. “I mean. In the sense that many things are more pleasant than a murder. I imagine. Not that I imagine murders, I don’t, just—theoretically, I’m supposing—and—fuck.”

“Uh-huh,” Hank says, his soul having decided it’s completely done with all this and that it’d prefer a holiday in Wisconsin.

Connor peeks at him and sighs, putting his head down on the table. “Sorry.”

“You’re good,” Hank says with all the lexical prowess of the napkin he’s been strangling for the past several minutes.

The server, whose timing is impeccable, brings them their food, and they both dig in silently. Connor has a habit of wiping his mouth off with his napkin after every bite, which is both kind of adorable and extremely awful, because Hank doesn’t need any more reason to be thinking about Connor’s mouth right now or ever.

So, of course, Hank, whose remaining brain cell is dedicated to remembering how to use his fork and knife and not to restraining himself from inappropriate conversation, asks through a mouthful of pastitsio, “So if it’s a kiss, couldn’t you just find one of these reapers with their memory back and, I mean, you know?” 

Connor takes a slow sip of his water. “No.”

“Why not?” It’s not like thinking about Connor kissing some random other person is great, either. Luckily he doesn’t have to, because as mentioned, his brain cell is really quite stuck on the food.

“I mean, if I’m going to kiss someone, I’d—well, they’d have to take me out on a date or several, first.” 

Hank’s brain cell takes a brief moment to contemplate that this could theoretically be one of the weirdest fucking dates ever on the weirdest fucking day.

Then it goes back to the food. 

Which is why its traitor ass doesn’t keep him from saying, “I could take you on some dates.”

Connor’s fork clatters rather noisily to the ground, which brings Hank back on topic almost immediately. He blanches. “Like, just in the—if you—no pressure, uh—God damn it.”

“Uh,” Connor says, forkless. 

“God,” Hank groans, going to run his hand through his hair before remembering it’s pulled back and he’d fuck it up. What a dumbass idea. What a dumbass idea all this was, back to whatever dumbass god thought it’d be a good idea to create a Hank, and to make a Hank who lived long enough to fuck things up with a cute reaper. “That came out wrong, in that.” Might as well go with the whole-ass hog, this point. “It wasn’t supposed to come out at all? Fuck, I’m sorry, Connor. Look, even before you said anything about memories or past lives or kissing or anything, uh—I thought you were—neat.”

Literally fuck everything and him especially.

“Like, I mean. Obviously you’re a—good-looking guy—and you’re nice and—” Hank drums his hands on his knees nervously under Connor’s wide-eyed gaze. “I mean, I wasn’t gonna say anything, because—I mean—like, I’m just some old fucked-up bastard—”

“Wait, so this wasn’t a date,” Connor says, and Hank stalls, jaw dropping slightly. “No, it’s okay, I’d just been wondering.” 

“Um,” Hank says, and he has a fork, but he thinks he might be bending it in half. 

“Hank, I don’t—” Connor exhales through his teeth. “I’m not allowed to date anybody, regardless of whether they’re human or—sweet immortals with nice eyes.”

“Yeah.” Does it count as a fork if it’s a circle?

“But.” His expression goes all resolved, and he gives a single, firm nod. “You’re right, I’ve already done so much, and I like you. So fuck it. Let’s murder someone.” He takes a moment, then adds, "Euphemistically.”

Hank takes a few moments to process that before laughing breathlessly into his palm. The ouroboros fork is still there, and it presses uncomfortably against his nose, but whatever. “God. You’re really somethin’ else, Connor.” 

“In a good way?”

“In a good way,” Hank confirms with a wry smile. He has no idea what the hell is happening, just happened, will happen, in any tense or conceivable universe, but he might as well go along with it, he figures. 

Connor gives another one of those shy smiles at his lap, and Hank’s little Grinchy heart swells however many sizes are contained within a metric fuckton. 

“But we still can’t kiss today,” Connor says. “Because this wasn’t a date, apparently.”

“Okay,” Hank says, even though it’s a ridiculous distinction, because for one he’s not gonna press something like that on Connor for the world, and for another he thinks if Connor kissed him today he’d probably properly die and then he wouldn’t remember shit anyway.

Good way to go, though. He imagines.

(Because—he’s allowed to do that now, right? If they’re going to go on a date? A date. With Connor. Who might kiss him, if he wants to. 

God al-fuckin-mighty, yeah, it’s a good thing Connor isn’t doing anything of the sort today, because Hank’s having palpitations.)

It’s also a good thing they were both mostly done with their food, because neither of them have usable forks anymore. Hank tries his best to even it back out, and Connor laughs.

It finishes up after that, with Hank paying because it really was supposed to be him thanking Connor and not this whatever-the-fuck, but they’re both smiling and nervous-laughing the whole time, and Connor leaves with the same little wave from the beginning, promising to text later and to be sure to see Reed the following morning. Hank watches him go, disgustingly heart-eyed for all that really happened was just they agreed to go on one date, with one maybe-kiss (that maybe-might restore his memories, and he still can’t think about that in any detail because he doesn’t know how he’d deal if it didn’t, then.) But still. A date. With Connor. A Grim Reaper. A hot Grim Reaper.

Weird. Today is weird as fuck.

But so nice that he keeps smiling until he’s back home on his couch staring up at the ceiling, keeps smiling until it hurts, until Sumo jumps up on his stomach and knocks all the air out of Hank’s lungs. He buries his head into Sumo’s fur, and says out loud, “I’m going to go on a date with Connor.”

Sumo slobbers in as congratulatory a manner as he can manage, and Hank grins into Sumo’s belly before patting at his side. “Okay, but also, get the fuck off. I need to breathe.”

Chapter Text

Connor doesn't do things on impulse. He thinks carefully and evaluates, looks both ways before crossing the street; he is not the sort of person who will act without thoroughly considering the impact of whatever it is he might do. 

That said, he leaves the café with Hank feeling like he's just leapt into the dark without a flashlight or any idea where he is, and he feels giddy and happy and also very, very nervous. Giddy because he was forward enough to breach the idea of kissing Hank, of dating him, happy because Hank agreed and looked just as shocked by the whole thing as Connor was. And then nervous, because it's all well and good to talk about dates and kisses and liking someone and another entirely to think that he might actually properly do them. To knowingly breach the rules without concretely knowing what the consequence will be. They are told they will be punished, and—and sure, Connor can tell himself that they've already done that and he's managed, but he knows he can only ignore the question in the back of his mind for so long: surely he doesn't actually think the gods are that lacking in creativity that they couldn't devise something that would hurt?

He teleports back home caught between a silly smile and a worried frown and ends up just looking kind of troubled, which he supposes he is. He sinks onto his couch and pulls out his phone, chewing on his lip and staring at the screen. He could text Hank now. But maybe…well, maybe he could also wait until he feels more even-keeled, until he's not so jittery and— 

"Reaper 800," a familiar voice comes behind him, and he screeches and throws the phone into the air before scrabbling to catch it.

"Goodness gracious," he says breathily, twisting around to see Nine. "What are you—are you all right?"

It's a valid question. Nine looks like shit, inasmuch as it is possible for Nine to look like shit. He lacks his usual composure, and his hair isn't quite in order, and he looks a bit more pale. Which is impressive, because he's pretty pasty naturally.

"I don't know," he says miserably, and Connor blinks at the admission. Nine isn't really the sort to acknowledge negative emotions or uncertainty or—Connor hadn't been fully certain he experienced anything other than the desire to mess with people and to work. "Do you…I know you have time. But would it be all right if we talked?"

Connor continues blinking, aware that he probably looks a bit ridiculous. Nine wants to…talk. Right. Okay.

"I don't really know who else I can go to," Nine says, casting his eyes down at his feet and shifting his weight minutely, and Connor snaps out of his shock.

"Well, yes, of course. Sit down. I can make…tea?"

"It's all right," he murmurs, but does sit down, at the opposite end of the couch, as far away from Connor as it's possible to get. His posture is stiff and straight. Connor stares at him, wondering whether he should say something or just stay quiet or— "Reaper 800. I would like to make it clear that everything I say today is fully hypothetical."

"Right," Connor says slowly.

"Right," Nine echoes, clenching his fists. "So, hypothetically. If you were to—to learn something. Something about someone. Someone important to you."

Ice washes down Connor's spine, and he presses his lips together and gives a shaky nod.

"And this person is important to you in a way that is…not appropriate…but you would never dream of acting on that." His voice is a bit vicious at that, passionate, and his eyes go all flinty. "It is a feeling that you are ashamed of, but you wouldn't do anything. You are content to simply watch over them, to wish for their happiness."

Connor doesn't think this is a confession, so he doesn't think this is about him, but that means he doesn't know what this is about. He opens his mouth to say something in affirmation, just to show he's listening, but Nine looks a bit like he might fly apart if he's stopped or reminded that he is next to someone who can hear him. His hands are white at the knuckles, and his lip has a nasty curl. 

"And you learn that this person has…discovered something they should not know. A secret. A secret that you are obligated to report, but that, if reported, will hurt them."

Connor processes that statement, now definitely on the side of frowning. Hypothetical his ass; Nine is emotionally repressed, but he's no storyteller and they both know it. What is a secret that he would have to report that someone important to him would be hurt by? Who would be important to Nine anyway? He doesn't think he does much outside of work and his consulting job—

His consulting job at the Detroit Police Department.

At the Detroit Police Department, where Hank, who is immortal, works. 

Alongside his godson, Detective Reed, who had put together that Connor isn't human. Connor. Who looks remarkably similar to Nine.

…Ah. He can't really confirm that, but that would…make sense. If Nine heard that a human (Reed? Reed is important to him? He's in love with Reed?) had learned about his identity, rules dictate that he report this to authorize corrective action. Which would normally be a memory wipe, and punishment for the careless reaper, but Reed has grown up alongside and with knowledge of the supernatural. Would a wipe be enough to ensure that Reed would never make that connection again? What would the gods do if they decided the answer to that question was no?

(Reed is being targeted by that serial killer, Connor remembers, and ice rolls over him again. No. Surely not. Surely it's just a coincidence, and—Connor is going to help with that anyway. So. It's fine. It's not that—it's fine.)

"If this happened, hypothetically," Nine says, returning Connor's attention to him. "What—" He hesitates, brow furrowing, looking away. "I shouldn't ask this of you." 

"Nine," Connor says, as gently as he can muster. "You can ask me." 

His eyes reflect the afternoon light when he glances at Connor, a bit desperate and a lot hopeless. 

"Hypothetically," he says, and stops again. 

"Yes."

"Hypothetically, what would you do?"

Connor knew he was going to ask that question as soon as he said he shouldn't, and he knew the reason Nine didn't want to. He knows Nine has seen every moment he hesitates, every moment he looks a bit too sad at an appointment. He knows Nine knows he returns to the scenes afterwards. He knows that the only thing that keeps this tenuous thing going is plausible deniability, and that Nine is asking him to cross that line. Because hypothetical or no, Nine is asking what he would do in this situation, and he's pretty sure that Nine knows that his answer isn't going to be that he should do what the gods tell them is right.

He's pretty sure that's the reason Nine came to him, now.

But he knew that and told Nine to ask anyway, and so it is that he gives a halfhearted smile, a little shrug. "I think I'd have to decide what was most important to me. Between upholding rules that I don't necessarily fully understand and that could hurt someone I love, and—and upholding what I believe in. And I think…I'd take whatever punishment that might be given me, even if I don't know what it is or how it could ruin me, I think I'd take that if it meant being the person I want to be and protecting the people who make me closer to being that person." 

Nine is openly staring at him now, expression inscrutable. They both know he didn't say this was hypothetical. Connor thinks he probably knows it isn't.

Connor inches a bit closer so that he can rest his hand on Nine's clenched fist. Just briefly. "If you decide he's worth it, I'm behind you every step of the way." Then he stands to go make himself some tea, because maybe Nine doesn't want it, but he's pretty sure he needs it.

"He?" Nine asks, face twisting.

"Hypothetically," Connor calls out, raising the phone that's been in his hand to text Hank. Thanks for lunch, he says, and, Let me know what day is good for us to meet up again. 

There's only silence in response, and when he looks back, Nine is gone. He's not really surprised. He gave him a lot to think about. Hell, he basically told him he was willing to rebel, which means if Nine makes the decision to report he's got two people to report now. That if he doesn't, he's rebelling too.

He doesn't know what Nine will decide. Maybe he was reading too much into it and Nine didn't want anything confirmed. Maybe he's just signed his own death warrant. (Re-death warrant, he thinks wryly, and shakes his head.) But if he did, well—he's sticking to what he believes. He's leaping into the darkness, yes, but it's his own choice to do so.

He goes to work that night and texts Hank until they decide on a date the following week and then he sleeps and wakes up to teleport to a coffee shop to try to go against fate.

Reed is there, like Hank had said he would be. Connor is invisible right now, so he's free to watch him along with the rest of the coffee shop patrons, eyes sweeping over everyone to look for the man in question. He doesn't see anybody who looks like the man, but he can see Reed, tired and grumpy and responding to the employees' questions with one-word answers. He wonders what about him drew Nine in, what makes him someone that Nine could be willing to contradict everything he stands for.

But then, Connor thinks that someone could ask the same question about Hank. Not that he's in love. But what is it about Hank that makes him someone that Connor is willing to sacrifice for? He's kind, sure, and funny, and attractive, but. Connor tilts his head as he thinks. Perhaps it is just the strength of his convictions that convinced Connor that he, too, could be strong in the face of the gods' will. Hank was told that he could not die without being given a reason, but he did not take that to mean that there was a reason and that he was bound to their will in return. When given the opportunity to fight, he took it. Connor would like to think that he could be someone who makes decisions that quickly—without thought, based solely on principles.

Reed's coffee is ready, and he picks up the carton—one coffee, Connor notes with a rush of something like affection, is Hank's order again—but as he's leaving, someone in a baseball cap and hoodie bumps into him.

"Hey, watch it," he growls, and the person looks up.

It's the man, the serial killer who's going to—who could kill Reed, and Connor's heart rate picks up as he strides towards them, still invisible. He has to get to the man first. He doesn't know what he'll do, but— 

The person's eyes widen. "You," he breathes, then laughs, face crinkling up horribly. "Oh, it's you! The gods are giving me a little gift," and he reaches out to touch Reed's jacket. Reed looks confused and a little horrified. He steps away, and simultaneously, Connor reaches both of the men with his hands outstretched.

If a Grim Reaper touches a human, that reaper will see the human's past lives. Gavin Colin Reed is human. As it happens, he has lived two lives prior to the one he is living at present, and as it also happens, he has been a part of this story before. He is not aware of this, of course. 

But Connor, whose hand has accidentally brushed against Gavin's own raised hands, now is. 

a boy grows into a man in a world that is constantly changing and this changing world requires ships to explore it and this man helps build those ships and it is a late night at work counting the day's pay that he feels a touch on his neck and it is that same late night that there is a stone rammed against the back of his head—  

but before, before that, the boy is young and waiting for his uncle and he isn't coming home where is he and it is cold and he is hungry and his head feels light and then he is far, far too warm, and Chares still isn't here (he said he was going to try to talk to the men, to work it out, he made a mistake but it isn't his fault and Cleon I'm sorry I'll be back soon I promise I'll bring some food), but he's still cold and warm and light and heavy all at the same time and his eyes are starting to close when he wrenches over and sees blood on the ground and knows it came from him but just before they close completely his uncle is there, finally, finally, crying but there and reaching out, and the boy looks up at him and his eyes that are blue like the sea they watch together every day—

Connor wrenches his hand back and stumbles back into a thankfully unoccupied table, eyes wide. His mouth opens to form a word, and he can recognize that the man is gone and Reed is looking around all confused before he mutters and adjusts his jacket and leaves the store, and he can recognize all that, but what he cannot recognize or reconcile or understand is why he just saw Hank in Reed's past life.

Because, frankly, what the fuck, and additionally, what the fuck is he supposed to do with that?

He teleports out of the store back to his home and sits down on the couch. He needs to think. He needs to text Hank that the serial killer made contact and compare notes to see whether this is the same as what he saw in his vision and—he needs to—he needs to communicate in some way that apparently Hank did have a life before this, because Connor knows his classics but even if he didn't he'd know there's a difference between ancient Greek and medieval Byzantine clothing. And that, in that life, he and his godson were a lot more related. 

What the fuck.

He may have just woken up but he thinks he's going to get more sleep anyway. Why the hell not. He's very tired, all of a sudden. Before he sleeps his jumbled mind settles on texting Hank we need to talk about some Reed things, and also keep him out of alleyways if you would, which he will later realize doesn't make much sense.

But in his defense, none of the rest of this does either.

Chapter Text

Hank does not see the text, nonsensical or no, but things are confusing enough right now without it. 

The reason he does not see the text is because Reed calls him several minutes after leaving the coffee shop. Reed doesn't call him unless he needs to, now that he's in the city—Hank doesn't blame the guy, he hates phone calls too—which means he knows when he sees it that something's probably wrong. 

Given there's a serial killer maybe-after him, Hank imagines about nine million worst case scenarios before his finger hits the accept button. "Reed, you okay?" he asks immediately, panicked. He spares a brief thought to wonder, if it is the serial killer, if Connor is— 

No. One problem at a time. 

"I'm fine, but I think we need to check on Lijah. Like, right away. Can you get your car ready? I know you can teleport something the size of a car, but anything police issue they'll be tracking GPS and gas consumption and—" 

"Yeah, yeah, of course. How far out are you from the station?" Hank questions, already heading out to the garage. 

"Like three minutes maybe, I'll meet you at the car. Look, Hank, you've seemed kinda distracted so I didn't wanna say anything, but Lijah's been sending me some weird-ass messages, like—fuck, sorry ma'am, I'm in a hurry—like yesterday morning he was saying shit about how I should stay away from Nine, who's—that's the name you use for Joe, right? And. And he was saying, like, 'you cannot interfere with destiny'—"

Hank's heart plummets down into his gut. How the hell would Elijah know about Nine, or anything to do with Reed's destiny?

"Holy fuck," he mumbles, fumbling at his waist for his car keys, mind struggling to wrap around what this could mean.

"Anyway, I figured he was just really high or something, but just now when I left the coffee shop he texted me again. And it said, just, 'I know I mentioned dinner, but I'll be requiring you and Hank here earlier than expected, please come here immediately', and he refused to answer his phone and he's refusing to text back and, fuck, I don't know what's going on but—" Hank can hear Reed's breathing coming shorter and harsher. He has anxiety problems, sometimes, but Hank doesn't blame him for being worried.

"Reed, c'mon, breathe. We'll get there as soon as you—hey, I see you." He punctuates that with a little, probably unnecessary, wave. "Get over here and we'll find out what's happening. He'll be okay, yeah?" 

Reed's breathing doesn't even out, so he's probably having some kind of anxiety attack, but he does give a jerky nod and speed up his run. Hank opens up the door telekinetically since they're in a hurry and all and Reed gets in, hanging up on the phone and tapping on something to dial someone else, probably Elijah again. "Address," he says pointedly, "And buckle up, would ya?" 

"Is now the time to be pissy about car safety?" Reed responds, snippish, but puts on his seatbelt and gives Hank the address. Hank draws from the power at the back of his mind to displace space around them, driving the car towards the exit of the underground garage and connecting it to the entrance of Elijah's estate.

It's snowy out here, for some reason, and the air is oppressively cold as Hank parks next to the equally oppressive-looking house and gets out of the car again. Hank walks up, but Reed runs, pounding on the door as hard as he can manage until it opens. In the doorway stands a blonde woman with a sweet face but a blank expression. 

"Chloe, where's Lijah? Is he okay?" Reed is peering over her shoulders desperately into the house like it'll get him a glimpse of the situation. Hank reaches the doorway, mind still chewing on what Reed said about Elijah's texts. He knew about Nine. How could he know about Nine?

"He's all right, I think," she says. "Come in, though, we'll find him and make sure." She steps aside, gesturing indoors, and Reed pushes past her and into a room with a big swimming pool, Hank following silently behind him. 

"Lijah? Where are you? Come on, you little bitch, I want an explanation—" 

Elijah is sitting in a chair in a large connected room with a sofa and a big white rug, looking a bit confused. "Gavin?" Chloe walks next to him, and he stands, taking a few steps forward. "Why are you—" 

"What the hell are you after, looking so surprised—" Gavin continues to stride forward, headed for Elijah, but he stops straight in his tracks. "Huh?" 

Hank goes cold. "Reed—Gavin. Don't try to touch him." 

"What the fuck do you—" He looks like he's trying to take another step, but he's frozen. "What the fuck?" Elijah's eyebrows are raised, mouth parted but not moving.

"I said don't try to touch him. I think—" Hank swallows, eyes closing slowly, before he opens them again, frowning. "I think, uh, I think Elijah might be a god right now."

"I—" Gavin starts to protest, his head whipping around, but then he falls to the ground soundlessly. 

"Oh, no you fucking didn't—" Hank growls, stepping forward, but he hits some kind of barrier that he can't pass. "You little shit, you better not have hurt him. Or Elijah. You gods have no—" 

"You're mistaken," a voice says, old and dark and very, very calm. It seems to come from everywhere at once and is still somehow quiet, but it's not really coming from everywhere, is it?

It's coming from Chloe, who gives Elijah a kiss on the cheek, and then he, too, crumples to the ground. Chloe sits down on the couch, legs crossed and posture formal but relaxed, a hand on her knee as she taps a single fingernail against it, watching him. Evaluating him. She doesn't look happy.

"Oh," Hank says dumbly.

"They're both perfectly fine," she says, casting her eyes briefly down at them. "I do not interfere with the fate of humans." Her finger goes tap, tap, tap, then stops. "You, however."

Hank's mouth is dry. He swallows again, eyes wide.

"I even gave you a reminder. 'Remember what I told you.'" Hank's mind returns to that one text from Elijah's phone, just after he found out about Gavin's fate. Her tone is almost sardonic. "Do you not remember?"

"Death is a gift you give, I took it and you took it back, blah blah whatever the fuck," Hank says, struggling to keep his voice together against the overwhelming pressure. "Yeah, I remember. It was fucking stupid."

"It is law," the god hisses, eyes narrowing in displeasure. "You have seen eight hundred years by now. Do you still not understand that death is necessary? You tried to end this eternal existence of yours several times, if I recall. More than several. And yet you begrudge others the same gift you desire so desperately yourself?" 

Hank points at Reed, voice going angry, finger shaking. "He's just a kid. He's—fuck's sake, he's barely done anything yet! His greatest accomplishment is the one time he broke the local record for shots done in one night without vomiting, he's—he doesn't deserve to die. He has so much he can do. He has love to find and—"

"Ah, love," she says, looking at her fingers dispassionately. "I suppose that would be on your mind, wouldn't it."

Hank's stomach twists uncomfortably. "I. What?" 

"Reaper 800-51. Connor," and her voice is sneering and so, so cold. Hank inhales sharply, just a small, broken thing. Oh, no. Oh, fuck, no, they know— 

"Of course we know. Please, Hank, you're not entirely stupid. You really thought your words were private just because they were not in front of one of his direct superiors? You really think us so limited in power?" 

"He hasn't done anything wrong," Hank gasps out, feeling the air thin around him. "He's—it's not directly disallowed to help me find out who someone is before he kills Reed, right? It's a loophole—"

"The gods do not allow loopholes," she says, voice thundering, room darkening as she gets up from the couch in one smooth, fluid motion, striding towards him until the barrier is the only thing between them. "They create tests, Hank." Her mouth presses together, and Hank doesn't think he's ever had someone look at him with so much derision. Disgust. Hank feels utterly small. "They create tests," she repeats, "And you have both failed."

Hank feels the weight of her gaze like the world on his back, but he can't back down here. Not to—whatever this is. God or no, he doesn't want to just lie down and let her (him? them?) fuck with the people he cares about like this. Her lips twist as he thinks it.

"So what now, huh?" He keeps direct eye contact, stony-faced and firm.

"I am not permitted to interfere until…all of this reaches its conclusion." She sounds fucking pissed about it, too. "But I can recommend a few things. First, do not try to change Gavin Colin Reed's fate. Second, stay away from the one you call Nine. And third, cease all interactions with Reaper 800-51." 

"Hm." He pretends to think about it, but they both know he isn't. "I'll recommend you something too. How about you just go fuck yourself?" 

Her nostrils flare, and then she collapses on the ground with everybody else, wind rushing around the room and then up before everything is still. 

He hears Reed groaning and sighs, relieved. "Wha' the fuckin' fuck," he says groggily. "Am I drunk?" 

Elijah revives next, blinking, raising his head slightly to look around before his eyes fall on Hank. "I didn't expect you to be at an orgy," he says thoughtfully, eyes unfocused. 

"But your brother's fine?" Hank asks with a huff, striding over to kick him lightly in the stomach. "Get up, you ass."

"I didn't realize it was him," he protests, rolling over onto his back and staring up at the sky. "God, what the hell did I take?"

"Really worries me this is apparently a common enough thing that's a question you can ask." He kicks him again. "All of you up. I'm done with this day."

"You arresting me?" Reed inquires, then snorts.

"Are you Hank? I don't think we've ever met, but I've heard of you," says Chloe from the ground, surprisingly cheerful for all of...everything.

"Oh for fuck's sake." Hank walks away, yelling, "I'm getting a glass of water. Get up off the fucking ground already." 

"Get me one too," Reed calls out weakly, and Hank throws a middle finger behind him. He can barely hear, "This wasn't actually an orgy or some kind of...drug party, right?"

"Drug party?" Elijah asks incredulously, amused. Hank leaves behind their bickering in favor of finding water in the kitchen.  

He gets a glass after a bit of fumbling in the cabinets and sighs, pulling out his phone to check the time. It's...later than he expected. Some kinda local time field manipulation, maybe? Wouldn't put it past that fucker. He also has a text from Connor, and he blinks when he reads it. 

Hank we need to talk about some Reed things, and also keep him out of alleyways if you would

Worried, he texts back. what??? what does that mean? and yeah, i have something to talk with you about too He figures he probably should mention the god thing, even if Connor'll freak out. He deserves to know.

The response takes a few minutes. It means that I saw the serial killer in the coffee shop today, and he seemed to recognize Reed. I can give you more details to help you ascertain if it was the same meeting you saw in your vision. And it also means that—I found out something about Reed in the process. Can we meet earlier than planned to exchange information? I don't know that this is something that would be appropriate to discuss over text.

Hank sinks against a counter, sighing. God. Of course. It's just one thing after another these days, isn't it. He can't even muster shock or much of anything at all, not after what just happened.

The god said they couldn't interfere until all of this reached its conclusion which, he guesses, by necessity means there is one. Feels an awful lot like they're starting to rush to it, now. yeah of course. how much time before your shift? don't think i'll be up to police shit rest of today anyway we can grab coffee or something and commiserate about our shitty lives

I prefer tea, but yes, that works. He sends the name of some place which Hank guesses is a tea or coffee shop or something, plus a time about a half hour off. It'll almost be like a date, except awful. 

Hank feels the oddest combination of amusement, fondness, and nervousness bubble up in his chest. almost?

We'll see :) 

well then i guess we can also see if it'll be awful or not when it happens

Guess so.

Hank laughs breathlessly into his palm, shaking his head and looking out the windows. Flirting at the end of the world, feels like. 

There are probably worse things he could be doing, though.

Chapter Text

Connor wishes, at the very least, that his nap were relaxing. It wasn't. He spent the whole time tossing and turning, drifting in and out of semi-wakefulness that becomes full wakefulness when he hears the buzz of an incoming text and subsequently answers Hank's question.

Hank saying he has something to tell him doesn't help on the relaxation front, either, and even the energy that thrums between them when they talk about dating isn't enough to distract Connor from the distinct sensation that he's running headlong into something he can't predict or understand. He's on edge all the way to their agreed-upon meeting place, but it helps a bit when he sees Hank, not as put-together as yesterday and looking very tired but still with a wan smile and a hand raised in a frozen wave.

"Hey, Con," he says when Connor reaches him, and his voice is so warm and steady amongst all this that Connor feels the strangest impulse to hug him.

Connor hasn't been very good at resisting his impulses, these days. He steps forward quietly to wrap his arms around Hank and bury his head in his chest. "Whoa," Hank says, surprised, but he brings his arms tentatively to Connor's back all the same and gives him a few pats.

"Sorry," Connor murmurs, muffled by Hank's clothing. "It's been a lot, recently."

"You're good." Hank's hand settles on Connor's back properly and rubs between his shoulder blades. "It really fuckin' has been, huh." 

Connor nods, then steps back. His face is slightly warm, and he can't tell whether it's a result of having it buried against Hank (and boy, there's a thought to not dwell on for any length of time right now) or because he's blushing.

Maybe both.

"Right," he mutters, turning to the door. "Tea and then earth-shattering revelations. Let's do this." 

Hank snorts and follows after him while Connor orders his usual Irish Breakfast tea; Hank gets Earl Grey, though he tells Connor he's more of a coffee guy these days purely due to the caffeine content. Connor briefly, and without any real ire, accuses him of being a heathen and a traitor. Hank laughs darkly and says that might hit more close to home than he realizes. 

"Does that relate to what you wanted to tell me?" Connor asks with a measured sip of tea, watching as Hank sags against his chair. 

"God, I almost forgot," he says, then musters a forced smile. "Well. Not really. Yeah, uh—got a real unexpected visit today." 

"From whom?" 

"The god who did this to me," he says, resigned and a bit irritated. "In the body of my other godson's girlfriend. My, uh, my guess is they're over death or something, with all the—death is a gift—" 

Connor's hand shakes when he gulps down all the rest of his tea. "Oh. Well." 

His laugh is completely humorless this time. "Yeah. They conked out Reed and his brother Elijah and, uh. Said don't try to save Reed, don't talk to Nine, and...stay away from you." 

Connor wishes he hadn't finished his tea. "Right. Of course."

"And...fuck. I wish I didn't have to say this, but, uh...they know about all this. Said something about how they don't leave loopholes, they make tests, and we've failed them. And then they said, like, they can't interfere until everything ends, but." Hank spreads his hands out in a half-shrug. "I'm really sorry, Connor. I...know that's not really enough to make up for dragging you into all this, but..." 

Connor presses his shaking hands against the table and takes a deep breath. "I made my own decisions, Hank." He's sure if he thinks about this too long he'll panic, but that at least is true. "And I made my decisions knowing full well that everything could be found out, and if it were that it would be a punishable offense."

"Still."

Connor tries a weak smile. "There doesn't need to be a still."  

Hank huffs and, after a moment's pause, rests his hands over Connor's. "Still."

Connor looks at their hands, then smiles—small, but more genuine. "Okay. Still." 

"You're taking this pretty well," Hank remarks, squeezing his hands.

"We're in public. The scrambling probably wouldn't know how to deal with it if I started screaming."

"Fair." Hank hides a grin when Connor turns his hands over to interlace their hands. "So, uh, your news next? You said it's about Reed." 

Connor straightens slightly in his seat. Reports are much more familiar territory than whatever it is the last few minutes have been. "Yeah. While I was watching over him this morning, he and the serial killer bumped into one another. He had on a baseball cap and hoodie, but I was still able to see his face well enough. When he saw Reed, he said..." Connor casts his eyes upward, trying to remember the exact wording. "'Oh, it's you. The gods are giving me a little gift.'" 

"Shit," Hank says, eyebrows furrowing. "You think they know each other or is the guy having—I dunno, some kind of delusion?"

"Reed didn't seem to recognize him, but I could be wrong. I certainly didn't ask him. Do you remember them speaking in your vision?"

Hank sighs, extricating one hand to rub at his forehead. "No, but I don't see everything, just flashes. God. I don't...I don't know." 

"We'll figure it out," Connor says softly. It's more confident than he feels, but Hank probably needs reassurance right now, not the too-large odds that this will all go wrong for everyone. "But there's more I need to tell you, too. I mentioned I found out something about Reed." 

"Yeah," Hank says, looking even more exhausted.

"But also something about you." Connor bites his lip. There's probably not really a delicate way to word this. "I mentioned when reapers touch humans, they can see their past lives. In the life prior to this one, Reed was killed as a young man. But before that one, in his first life, he lived somewhere in Greece a long time ago as a boy named Cleon, and he had an uncle named Chares, and that uncle was—well. You, by all appearances." 

Hank blinks at him.

"This would have been substantially before you woke up in England," Connor adds helpfully.

"Huh," Hank says thoughtfully.

"So, like, before you woke up an immortal in England eight hundred years ago, you had at least one life in ancient Greece with a nephew who's now Reed," Connor summarizes. Because he's helpful, and Hank mostly just looks incredibly confused. 

"Well." Hank exhales. "Huh. Guess...that might as well be a thing. Why not."

"Are you okay?" 

"I mean, I thought it was likely enough I had to have been alive to do something to be punished for." Hank rubs his beard with his free hand. "Greece, huh."

"Yes," Connor says uncertainly. 

"Reed, huh."

"Yes?"

"Well, that's a bitch of a thing."

"You're taking this pretty well," Connor says, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. 

"No screaming in public, I think you said," Hank says with a shrug and the same kind of rueful grin. 

"Right." Connor laughs, looking down at his empty teacup. "A lot recently all around." He uses his own free hand to rub a circle into the table. He's been thinking about something else, alongside everything, on the way here. Now that he's actually in front of Hank, though, he's not sure he has the courage to bring it up. Funny this is where he's drawing the line after putting himself at risk in so many other ways. "Um...Hank." 

"Yeah?" 

"It feels...wrong to...not..." He wrinkles his nose, frustrated. "Now that we know for sure you had a previous life."

"Uh-huh?" Connor can't bring himself to look at Hank's face. He probably is confused. Connor is also confused, and getting more frazzled by the second.

"Well, it feels like I shouldn't, um, withhold the ability to, um. Potentially recall it." 

Hank blinks again, then frowns. "Are you saying you, uh...feel obligated to kiss me?" 

Connor fidgets in his seat. "I feel like obligation implies I wouldn't be willing without everything else going on." 

Hank opens his mouth, closes it. "I...uh."

"I mean. If you're...down." 

"Down," Hank repeats. "I...God. Yeah? But if you're, uh—speeding up on my account—"

"I've been thinking about it since we talked about it yesterday," Connor says in a rush.  

Hank looks amused through the blush creeping up his cheeks. "Thought you wanted to wait for a date."

"I said we'd see. And, well, then I saw you."

He doesn't think about how that sounds, too much, until Hank's blush intensifies and he runs his hand through his hair. "Oh." 

And, well, as Connor mentioned previously, his impulse control really has just been shot to all hell lately, so he leans over the table and their empty teacups and puts his own hand on Hank's cheek and looks in those blue eyes that have been distracting him ever since they met to check that this is all right, and Hank looks shocked but he also nods, so Connor kisses him.

When a Grim Reaper kisses a human, that human's memories of their past life are returned to them. As Markus and Simon discovered, quite by accident, when a Grim Reaper kisses another Grim Reaper, both of their memories are restored.

Connor had hoped by kissing Hank that Hank, being in a similar non-human category to Grim Reapers, would have his memories restored. He had no particular hopes about the restoration of his own memories. As far as he knew, prior to this kiss, immortals did not have any ability to do so. 

However, 'as far as he knows' was not really that far. As far as he knows, and as far as Hank knows, Hank was human before he became immortal. This is not precisely accurate.

Before Hank was immortal, he was a Grim Reaper also. Which means a number of things for Hank, but one thing especially for Connor: when his lips press against Hank's, his memories come flooding back to him like the sudden rush of the ocean coming to meet you when you cannot swim. 

—which he knew, of course, that he couldn't swim. It's not really something you forget. He'd always been scared of the ocean, had refused to go near it. Funny how knowing death is coming after you makes so many things easier to bear.

Or maybe not easy, exactly. Tolerable.

Conchobar considered himself fairly normal, before all of this happened. He had a dog and an apprenticeship, which is more than he deserved as a bastard son. Normal, except for being able to see the shadow folk when nobody else could. Reaper 280-81 had told him it was because his father tried to strangle him as a child, left him to die. He said sometimes people get one foot in the river. Not always, but sometimes.

Most of the shadow folk don't talk to him, and he had stopped trying a long time to talk to them either. He hears the whispers, after all, that he's cursed. Maybe he is. But he doesn't need to foster any more talk if he can help it. Reaper 280-81 is an accident. He finds him in the storehouse and stares, and Reaper 280-81's ocean-blue eyes go wide and he runs his hands nervously through his long hair and he says, "Oh, damn it all," and slaps his leather armband.

Conchobar can still see his shadow, and he says so. Reaper 280-81 asks him a few more questions after that, and that's when he tells him about having one foot in the river, and eventually they just keep talking. Reaper 280-81 is good for conversation. More thoughtful than most of the folk in town, anyway, and much less concerned about his parentage.

He does not tell him until later that he's a messenger of death, or that he is Reaper 280-81. Conchobar does not ask, either. It seems like it would be bad luck. He tells him only after two months or so, when he's rushing towards him, saying all panicked, "Conchobar, I got an announcement for your death. You need to stay away from your father tonight."

"Death? I'm not—how do you—"

"I haven't been fully honest with you. I am in this world because I accompany death. If I am told you will die, that means it will happen unless you change it." 

They had argued after that, about why Conchobar should have the right to flout death when others do not, and Conchobar had left and let fate guide him to the ocean, where his father found him, pushed his head into the water—

Until a shadowy figure pulls him off with inhuman strength, letting Conchobar draw a water-logged breath, coughing ocean water out his lungs while his father sprawls on the sand. Later, he will stay away from Conchobar, saying he is followed by evil spirits.

For now, Reaper 280-81 looks at him helpless, says, "You're my friend. I'm sorry. I couldn't let it happen."

And in that moment, a bright light surrounds the beach, and his friend and savior is gone. 

It is not the end of it, though. The universe attempts to right wrongs, and Conchobar being alive still is a wrong it cannot permit. What he sees after that is much worse—horrifying things, draping over his shoulder, whispering into his ear, die, die, you should be dead. And he does nearly die, time after time, and then it stops, and he almost thinks himself safe. 

The god who shows up, not a form so much as a nebulous disruption in space, dashes his hopes when he says, thoughtful, "You do know this will happen again."

"It will?" he asks. He has long since gotten over his fear of being looked at wrong for talking to things others cannot see. They already think him mad.

"Eight is the number of the gods. You were eighteen when you were first saved. You are nearly twenty-eight. It will happen again at thirty-eight and so on until you die. The universe attempts to right wrongs."

This does not feel right to Conchobar, who says as much. 

"It is law," the god says, amused. "It is beyond your comprehension."

"It doesn't seem particularly fair to subject humans to laws they cannot comprehend," Conchobar says, and the disruption in space draws closer, almost like it is looking him over. 

"Interesting," the god says.

The god stays after that. He asks questions and Conchobar responds. He never answers questions about himself, but he is infinitely curious about Conchobar's perspective, if somewhat dismissive. Conchobar is tormented once more by the spirits who want him dead, and he nearly dies again and again and again, and the god observes. Once, he simply asks him, "Why do you keep fighting?"

Conchobar says, "I don't want to die just because the universe says it's wrong someone broke one of its rules." 

"Hm," the god responds, and then keeps watching. 

"This is going to keep happening, you said," Conchobar says after the spirits vanish once more.

"Yes. Until you die."

"I see." 

He spends a long time thinking about this, and then he travels to the ocean once more.

"Why are you doing this?" the god asks as he steps into the water and feels it against his feet. "You've been fighting it this long. Why now?"

"If I'm going to die anyway, I'd rather it be on my own terms," Conchobar says, and takes another step forward.

"I don't understand," the god says. 

"Maybe this is something beyond your comprehension, then," he says, and keeps walking forward until his feet cannot touch the bottom. Conchobar cannot swim, which he knew, of course. It's not really something you forget.

Funny how knowing death is coming after you makes so many things easier to bear, he thinks, as the water fills his lungs and his sight goes black, but for a small disruption in the space where the waves should be. 

He's back on the beach, then, and there is a man saying, "Conchobar, age thirty. Cause of death: suicide by drowning." He leads him to a place beyond this world, and Conchobar goes calmly until the light takes him. 

(and then there's nothing nothing at all nothing everywhere and a voice saying, death is a gift I give, and it is a gift you have stolen, and for that you must be punished— 

what did I do, he cries out into the nothing, what do you mean—

it is for the universe to decide when you die, the voice says, and it comes from everywhere at once and still nowhere, and it is quiet, and it says, it is not for you to decide this, it is not for you to kill yourself— 

and then there is nothing for eight hundred years and he cannot remember anything because there is nothing in his mind too, it is what you need to stay alive when you cannot die and when there is nothing else, and when they tell him he can forget all of this nothing if he just takes this cup, he gratefully drinks— 

when he wakes, they tell him, you are Reaper 800-51, and death is a gift the gods give, and you will help them deliver it until your punishment is complete, until you have repented fully of your crime, and his smile is blank when he says, yes, of course.)

Chapter Text

Hank doesn't remember what he was thinking before the man he used to be poisoned himself. Not for lack of memory, but simply because Chares wasn't thinking much at all when he did it—there was really just a general feeling of failure, I'm a failure, I've lost everything, I've let her and him and everyone down.

He hadn't really thought himself fit to raise a child in the first place. He's busy learning the craft and then with a few small sculpting commissions; he doesn't have time for marriage or children, and it's not really something he's questioned too much about. But Etesias is fighting elsewhere when Philometora gets sick, and she asks Chares before she passes to take care of Cleon, so—he doesn't really have a choice. He can't deny her this final wish. It's unfortunate timing, with him just about to get what will surely be the biggest commission of his life, but he takes Cleon in. 

At first they are both able to live comfortably on the commission, and Cleon grows well. But Chares realizes too fast that he has made an irreparable miscalculation in quoting how much the materials will cost, and while he cannot duck out of the contract for the sculpture, he knows that he will not be able to build it with the commission alone.  

The money goes quickly, and by the time the statue is nearly complete, Chares has exhausted money from every source he can think of. It's getting harder to find ways to feed Cleon. He knows that the boy is too thin for his age, and his cheeks were far too rosy this morning when he went out to beg once more for someone, anyone, to give him a loan. He's worried for him. 

His worries come true when he comes home that evening, dejected and rejected, to find Cleon collapsed on the ground, eyes fluttering weakly, next to a small spatter of blood. He cries and wails and reaches for him, but Cleon goes all too quick after that.

Chares doesn't last long after. The statue seems far less important, now, and he can't be punished for not finishing it if he's already dead. He barters for an herb with some of the brass he would have used to finish his work, and he crushes it up and takes it within the night. It doesn't take much.

(and then there's nothing nothing at all nothing everywhere and a voice saying, death is a gift I give, and it is a gift you have stolen, and for that you must be punished—

and this makes sense to him, that the gods would punish him for his death and the death of Cleon, so he lets the nothing enter him until it is the only thing left—

and he drinks when they ask him because he can only be grateful to not remember what he's done, and when he wakes they tell him you are Reaper 280-81, and death is a gift the gods give, and you will help them deliver it until your punishment is complete, until you have repented fully of your crime, and he nods because it seems only fitting.

at least, at first.)

Reaper 280-81 is stationed in Rhodes, a Greek island, and he is good at his job. He takes pride in not doing anything to slow down a very efficient system. He is always polished and he is always punctual. And, most importantly, he does not ask questions, no matter how much they creep at the back of his mind. He does not acknowledge these questions exist. He is a good Grim Reaper. 

He is a good Grim Reaper until he accidentally stumbles forward backing away from the man who is going to murder his client and brushes in his imbalance against the neck of his client, and when he sees this man's past life he sees himself, himself and a young boy, and when the man comes for the client with a stone in his hands he reaches forward instinctually to stop him, to protect him like he once could not— 

(how could this happen, seethes someone in a bright space, so bright it might be mistaken for there being nothing at all, our system is supposed to be perfect, he should not be able to remember—

but it did, says someone more calmly, and we must deal with it accordingly—

and they put a cup against his lips and he drinks, and when he wakes they tell him you are Reaper 280-81, and death is a gift the gods give, and you will help them deliver it until your punishment is complete, until you have repented fully of your crime, and he does not say anything at all because it seems disturbingly familiar and he cannot quite place why.)

Reaper 280-81 is stationed in Ireland, and he is good at his job. He takes pride in not doing anything to slow down a very efficient system. He is always polished and he is always punctual. And, most importantly, he does not ask questions, no matter how much they creep at the back of his mind. He may have them, but he will never voice them out loud. He is a good Grim Reaper.

He is a good Grim Reaper until there is a man who can see him, and who he cannot resist talking to, with tousled brown hair and soft brown eyes and a constantly troubled expression. He is a good Grim Reaper until Conchobar becomes his friend, and until he gets a death card for him, and until he knows he cannot just let Conchobar die.

And then, well, he is a very bad Grim Reaper indeed, because he directly intervenes in Conchobar's death, and a light flashes and when it does he is no longer on a beach staring at his friend. 

(you said this would fix things! yells someone, and his voice comes from everywhere and booms with all the fury of thunder confined in a too-small space. you said he would be fine.

I cannot know everything, says another, still calm.

see what is special about this human. observe him. he will need to die, of course. he was supposed to have died already.  

of course, says the one who is calm, and then there is silence.

what to do with you, muses the one who was loud and is now quiet. you have not fulfilled your punishment. perhaps more time in the void will do you good.

and then he is back to the nothing, which he does not remember but also remembers all too well, and he feels something blossom amidst the nothing, like a flower in a field without a name. not yet.  

they come to him after some time and ask if he will drink.

he says no.

they come to him again.

he says no, I will not drink.  

they come to him once more.  

he says I want to remember. I want to remember what has been done to me. and the flower is called injustice, and it is not fair, and his fists clench in the nothing—

this is unfortunate, says the loud voice after a moment, and then the nothing fills with everything and the everything is liquid, and he gulps it in and chokes on it until it fills every part of him there is left—

Hank wakes up alone, surrounded by wildflowers and nothing else.)

Hank jerks back from Connor with a gasp. The kiss didn't last that long, objectively, but it felt a lot longer given he experienced hundreds and hundreds of years all compressed into one moment during it, and he can tell Connor is as dazed from it as he is, eyes downcast and eyebrows furrowed into a frown.

Hank has a lot of things to say, but most of them are screaming, and they had both sort of agreed that wouldn't go over well. Maybe about as well as them talking about whatever the scrambling magic made them sound like they were talking about and then suddenly kissing and going all bluescreen-whatever-the-fuck during it, but one weird event is a novelty, two in a row is a pattern that gets you thrown out. 

Or, like, a reality TV show. They don't have any cameras around to give 'em that excuse, though.

"Those self-righteous motherfuckers," Connor says slowly from across him, and his frown has gone distinctly from contemplative to downright furious. Hank can't blame him. He doesn't know exactly what he saw, but it probably has something to do with him, given the boy he had given everything to save looked distinctly Connor-esque even around ten years younger. 

"No fucking kidding," says Hank, and Connor looks up at him and his face does this odd twisting thing before he drags his hand over his face.

"Can we get out of here so I can yell without it coming across like I feel really passionate about copyright law or whatever?"

"Great idea."  

Connor stands up, takes Hank's hand, and drags him out of the shop until they reach an alleyway, and then Hank feels the distinct sensation of space twisting around them, and then they're in an apartment and Connor strides straight to his couch and picks up a pillow and screams into it. Hank doesn't scream, just sits on the couch and flops back against it, but he thinks that mostly has to do with shock or something.

The intense desire to punch a god, now, that's got less to do with shock and much more to do with the anger that radiates out from his chest and sets his jaw working and his face dark.

"Suicide?" Connor demands, pillow hugged against his chest and pacing back and forth. "The reapers are being punished for suicide? I didn't even—they try to kill me for years and then get mad when I beat them to it?"

"Huh?"

Connor stops in his tracks and his face does that weird little twisty thing again. "I'm sorry, Hank."

"Can you, uh. Clarify? What for?"

"You saved me and I threw that away. I was just so tired of it, and I knew it would keep happening—the god told me I would keep nearly-dying until I actually died, and I was just—tired. I shouldn't have, I know that, but—" 

Hank puts up a hand. "I—okay, I'm really fucking confused about what you mean by that and we can get to it later, but whatever happened was a long fucking time ago, to two people who were a lot different than we are now. If you're worried I'm pissed at you, I'm not." 

"Right." Connor looks a bit taken aback at that, which is almost funny given every fucking other thing that's happened today. 

"I'm very fucking pissed at the gods," Hank adds, because he is, and if Connor is focused on being angry again maybe he won't look so guilty. 

"What did they even do to you? You know now, right?" Connor sits down on the couch next to him with a kind of defeated plop.

Hank sighs and briefly recounts what he remembered, and Connor does the same through an expression gone even more furious than before, and then they both sit in silence a few moments.

"What do we do?" Connor finally whispers, dropping one hand from where it's still hugging the pillow so he can grasp at Hank's hand again. "Can we even do anything? I don't even know why they haven't put us back in the void yet. They have to know that we remember."

"They just said there's going to be some kind of conclusion and they have to wait for it." Hank looks up at the ceiling. "Don't even want to think about what that could be." 

"End of the world?" Connor asks, and maybe it was supposed to be a joke, but his tone is humorless. 

Hank snorts anyway. "Who the hell knows." 

Connor gazes at his lap, then edges closer to Hank, squeezes his hand tighter. "I don't think I ever got to say thank you for saving me." 

Hank glances at him incredulously. "And getting you into this mess?" 

"It meant I got a lot more time than I bargained for, sure, but." He shrugs. "It also means I got to see you again. You were my only friend, you know."

Hank is sort of regretting looking at him, because now he can see the way his cheeks go pink, how his eyes dart to look at Hank before fluttering away again. "Friend?" he asks, a bit breathless, but he doesn't think anybody could blame him for that. "And now?"

Connor huffs, but with a hint of a smile, at least. "And now you're fishing for an answer you already know." 

"Do I?" Hank asks, and grins when Connor gives him a dry look, and then he leans over to kiss him. Properly, this time, because earth-shattering revelations and kisses don't exactly mix well, except for maybe the earth-shattering revelation that Connor's lips are soft and that he presses further into Hank when Hank flicks his tongue against the seam of his lips, and that he makes a small keening noise when Hank digs his hands into his hair. 

Someone clears his throat from the other side of the room, and they break apart and Connor whirls around to see Nine looking part apologetic but mostly just really frazzled. "My apologies for the interruption," he says, shifting awkwardly. "I wouldn't be here unless this were really important."

Connor squeaks and goes red.

"You can be embarrassed later," Nine says, an undercurrent of urgency in his voice. "Or not, I don't really give a shit. But—" He strides forward to the couch and proffers a small black envelope.  

They both know what that is. A death card. Connor blinks at Nine. "Why...are you giving this to me?" 

"Open it, please," Nine says, looking like it pains him to even say it.

Connor frowns, but takes the envelope, opens it, flips around the card to read it. His mouth parts. "Detective Reed?" 

"Holy shit," Hank says, taking the card immediately to read it. Gavin Colin Reed, tonight, in forty-five minutes. Cause of death, blunt force trauma. "Shit."

Connor stares at Nine, thoughtful, then says, "I'll ask you again. Why are you giving this to me?"

Nine winces. "I can't save him." 

"That would be against the rules, yes," Connor says, eyes narrowing, still thoughtful.

"I can't save him," Nine repeats. "But you could." 

"And you'd let me?" Connor asks, pointed; Hank is looking at Nine too now, at the clear struggle in his face. 

"I couldn't technically stop you," Nine answers eventually, nose wrinkling when he fixes his gaze on the wall nearby.

Connor looks at Hank, eyebrows raised in a clear question, but not one he ever needed to ask. "Fuck, yeah, of course we're saving him. Yeah?" 

"Yeah," Connor says, smiling wryly. "Of course."

When they look at Nine again, he's staring at them with his lips pressed together, but he exhales shakily and nods and then vanishes out of the room. 

"Forty-five minutes," Connor says in the ensuing silence. "We should probably get there ahead of time so we can find a place for you to hide." 

Hank would like to have at least one moment's rest in this awful fucking day. But he's not that lucky, and the gods definitely hate him, so he just takes Connor's hand so he can teleport them to the place where Gavin might die tonight. 

Connor gives him another small smile and a brief kiss. "He'll be okay." 

And Hank guesses he kind of has to believe that if he's going to get through this at all. "Yes, he will." 

Space twists around them and spits them out at a damp, dark warehouse looking out on the water and the last dregs of daylight, the place where they won't let Gavin die tonight. "All right," Hank says into the oppressive silence, just to have something to say. "Let's do this, then."

Which, of course, they will. A promise, a prediction, an eventuality: they will do what they were meant to come here and do.

What is intended for them is, of course, different from what they think is waiting for them at this juncture, at a beginning of an end. This is natural. They still do not have every piece of information yet. 

But then, this story would be far less interesting to tell if they did.

Chapter Text

They find a hiding place for Hank nearby, within hearing range of the other room. He spends some time complaining about not being able to turn invisible, of all the random-ass powers to leave out, but after that all there really is to do is wait.

So, while they wait, they talk. Connor doesn't really know what there is left to say—everything, nothing—but what he ends up going with is, "I feel like things were a lot simpler when I was a bastard peasant in 8th century Ireland." 

Hank snorts, leaning back against a wall. "I mean, there was a hell of a lot more incurable disease, but...yeah, also less in the way of gods fucking with you, I guess." 

"At least that I knew about." His voice is quiet, and he isn't looking at Hank, but he can see Hank is looking at him.

"Are you, uh...are you doin' okay?"

"Are you?" Connor asks, chewing on his lip. "I just...hate that it feels like we don't have any control over this. We could do everything right, maybe we are doing everything as right as we can, and maybe it still ends up—" He shakes his head, frowning at his feet. "The god said to you there would be a conclusion. It feels like there is one already, and we're just playing out a story with an end that was written a long time ago."

"Damn, Connor, that's pretty heavy," Hank says, sounding like he's going for a joke in the uncomfortable atmosphere, but Connor just wraps his arms around himself and presses his lips together.

Finally Hank sighs, pushing off the wall to wrap Connor in a hug. Connor briefly startles at the unexpected contact, but the warmth feels nice and Hank is strong and present, and he relaxes and untangles his arms to wrap around Hank in return. "Look, Con, I don't know what to tell you," Hank murmurs into his hair, dropping a brief kiss there and exhaling. "I don't know what the fuck happens here either. I don't know how this ends, and I don't know how it ends well. And—trust me, I feel like screamin' every inch as much as you did earlier. But all we can do right now is this. Thinking about how this all goes down, evaluating every possibility, agonizing over each one, I don't think that gets us anywhere. If there's already an end, I think we just get to it as best as we can with what we know for sure. And right now, all we know for sure is that Reed's in trouble. You—you know?"

Connor gives a small smile into Hank's coat, an equally small kiss on Hank's cheek. "You always did give good advice." 

"God, don't say that," Hank mumbles embarrassedly, clearing his throat. "I know for a fact I got you in trouble a few times back then."

"True. You advised me to let you try some of my food—" 

"Well, okay, that—" 

"And then you spit it out—"

"It was gross!" 

“Maybe. I still got in trouble for wasting food.”

"That's not advice, anyway." Hank's nose wrinkles, and he looks away a moment before coming back to Connor. "Do you wonder if—I don't know. Like, us knowing each other before. Do you wonder if that played a part in why we came together now?" 

Connor pauses. It's not something he's thought about before Hank asked, but it's an interesting question, and vaguely concerning. Were they drawn to each other just because of this shared fate? Was that why they fell in—why they liked each other? Was it the buried memories from before? Was this always going to happen, him and Hank?

Does that really matter with what he feels for Hank now?

"Like you said, thinking about possibilities isn't going to help," Connor says after a moment. "But if I had to be in this story." He stops again, hesitating. "I'm glad it was with you."

Hank's expression flashes from surprise to fondness to something a bit more sad, and then he just clears his throat once more. "You're a fucking sap."

"I watched a lot of romance movies in the nineties," Connor says, with a more genuine smile this time.

"You and Reed would get along then, I guess," Hank says with a laugh, then his face shutters. 

"He'll be fine," Connor murmurs, reaching up to cup Hank's cheek in his hands. "We'll make sure of that."

"Yeah." Hank still looks solemn, though, his eyebrows knit together. "I couldn't be enough for him, back then."

"That's not your fault, Hank." 

"I—" He grimaces. "I don't know. But I have to be enough for him today."

"I think you've always been enough for him," Connor says simply, because he doesn't know everything between them, but he thinks he does know that. He can't even begin to think of Hank not being enough. Not back when they were friends, not when Hank saved him, not now.

Hank gazes at him, then leans forward to kiss him, soft and slow and, this time, uninterrupted. 

When they break apart, Connor rests his head on Hank's chest for another moment before stepping back. "It's almost time. I'll get into the other room." 

"Okay. Uh—Connor."

"Yes?"

"Thank you for—for sticking with me. Through all this. I know I'm asking a lot."

Connor smiles and shrugs. "Not more than I'm willing to give you."

And then he turns, pressing his armband on his way into the room with the cross already on the ceiling to render himself invisible. What he doesn't say is that, beyond his affection for Hank, beyond their personal connection, he still owes him a life, even if it's not his. Despite everything, he owes him that much. And because of everything, he wants Hank to be happy. 

Even if things don't end up like that after today, they can save Reed, at least. And Connor knows that doing so will probably subject Reed to the same fate that he suffered all those years ago, but Reed seems like a tough guy. Maybe Nine can watch over him still. Maybe things can be kind of all right for them, at least. 

Connor checks his watch. Five minutes until showdown. Five minutes until everything changes again, he supposes. Maybe he should have kissed Hank one last time before he left the room. It seemed excessively dramatic, but this entire thing has been kind of dramatic, really. 

"—finally found you, finally—I was waiting, I hoped—" The muted sounds of something heavy being dragged, something heavy that's trying to protest, filter through the walls, and then the man comes into view. He's dragging Reed, bound and dazed but still struggling; he puts him in the center of the room and then stands back to look at him before taking off his gag. 

"I'm a police officer, it's a—a felony to assault—" he ekes out, eyes attempting to focus on the man and failing. 

"You weren't," the man says. "You are now. Hm. Do you know me?"

"The fuck would I know you," Reed says, head lolling over on his chest. 

"I killed you once," the man says, and his face twists, confused. "I hit you over the head. I remember it. I remember being—and I remember not being and I remember—and—and I—" His eyes screw shut and he slaps his hand to his head, moaning. "They told me because—I didn't drink—fuck, it hurts." 

Reed doesn't seem impressed by this display, and neither does Hank, slowly edging closer from near the doorway.

"The gods—the gods have—do you know why I make marionettes?" 

"No," Reed mutters, sounding unsurprised. The man must have mentioned that he was who they were looking for on the way over. 

"The gods make marionettes of us all," the man says, and he starts walking to a corner, where there's a pile of construction materials. "They toy with us. We're all on strings. We're all on strings. I just..." He hefts a piece of wood in his hand. "I just want my strings back." 

"You talk an awful fucking lot for a marionette," says Hank irritably, and blasts the man back against a wall with a sickening crack. He appears to be unconscious, but Hank still walks steadily closer to him, looking downright furious. Connor presses his armband again to render himself visible and rushes to Reed. 

"Don't kill him, you have handcuffs," Connor calls out distractedly, untying Reed's hands, his heartrate ratcheting up rabbit-fast when Reed just slumps forward. He gasps when doing so reveals the back of his head. 

There's blood everywhere, matting his hair and dripping down his neck.  

Connor realizes with a slowly dawning horror that the card said blunt force trauma. It didn't specify when that would occur, only that he would die from it eventually. 

"Fuck," Connor says, eyes wide. "Fuck, Hank, get over here, you need to get over here now. Reed is—I think he's—" 

"Huh?" Hank looks over and inhales sharply when he too sees Reed's head. "Oh, God. God, no." He runs over and skids on his knees to kneel by Reed's side, hands coming up to cradle his face. "No, no, no. Reed, hey. Gavin. Gavin Colin Reed, you ass, if you—if you d—" He shakes his head, and Connor sees how the action makes the dying light glint off of the tears appearing in Hank's eyes. "Gavin, come on—Connor, I can't fix this."

Connor hurriedly checks his watch to see how much time they have left. Twenty seconds, and ticking lower. He looks away, trying to blink away the own tears springing into his eyes. He may not have known Reed, but he knows he's important to Hank, and he's angry that they could be willing to give everything and the gods could still— 

Something catches his sight through his blurred vision.

It looks a bit like a disruption in space. Like the one he used to see when the god spoke to him.

Are they just watching? His face crumples and he yells, "Coward," and then—

Everything stops. There's one second left on the clock hand, but it's frozen there. Reed is frozen too, his eyelashes dark against his skin and mouth slack, and Hank slowly looks to the corner of the room as the disruption in space is replaced by Nine.

"What the hell," Connor whispers, gone quiet in his shock. It doesn't make sense for Nine to be there, unless...unless something that he can't even think about. Doesn't want to think about.

(When he first met Nine, he had commented on how odd a coincidence it was that they looked so similar. He had stopped himself from saying 'maybe we were related', because that would be a reference to their past lives, and that would be taboo. He had just said it was a funny coincidence, laughed a little about it.

Nine had told him, with a completely straight face, that he didn't believe in coincidences.) 

Nine gazes at Reed, and his expression is sorrowful, but he doesn't make any move to come closer. "I really hoped," he mumbles, then clears his throat. "I did hope you could get to him in time."

Hank stares at him. "What the—Nine, what are you doing just standing there—"

"I told you. I can't save him." 

"Hank," Connor murmurs, reaching out a hand to his shoulder. The puzzle pieces are beginning to fit together, but they aren't making a picture he wants to see. They aren't making a picture he wants Hank to see, either, but he thinks he can't save him from this any more than he could save Reed.

(The god Connor spoke to before dying had told him more than once that there weren't coincidences from the view of the gods, but Connor wouldn't have remembered that, then, meeting Nine on the first day of his new assignment, without his memory and without his doubts.) 

"I—what the fuck do you even mean—" 

"I can't save him. We have rules too." 

"We? Nine, what bullshit are you spewing right fucking now of all times—" 

"Hank, I don't think he's a Grim Reaper," Connor says, urgently tugging at Hank's shoulder. He can't save him, but maybe he can keep Hank from saying something that might—that—fuck, he can't even process all of this. 

(Connor had asked Nine once if he ever felt overwhelmed by everything. Nine had looked at him like he always did, curious but restrained, knowing there was something deeper but not questioning, and he had said to Connor, "I can't let myself feel anything while I'm here." 

It's funny, a little bit, how even the things you already remember will sometimes only come back to you when they finally make sense.)

"I can't save him while he's human," Nine says, and now his voice and expression are full of pained determination, "But I can bring him back as something else."

Time starts again, and Connor feels it when Reed's heart stops. Connor can't stop looking at Nine, but he knows that Hank next to him is breathing harshly, eyes wide and teary, hand still stroking over Reed's face like he can't believe what he's seeing in front of him still.

From behind them, where they don't see, from everywhere and also nowhere at once, Reed's voice says, "Okay, that's really fucking messed up." 

The room fills with a blinding light, and then, there is nothing left to hear or see at all.

Chapter Text

Hank had sort of expected that when he next opened his eyes he'd see the Void, so it's pretty fucking surprising when instead he sees a library that stretches as far as his eyes can register in every direction, and in the center of it all, someone curled up on an armchair with a book. Looking at them is—strange; it fills him with emotions he doesn't know how to parse, and his eyes keep slipping off them if he doesn't really work at it. But he keeps staring at them, doggedly, because he wants to understand and also because he really doesn't like being told what he can't do, even subconsciously.

"That's very like you," they say, amused. "You can come closer, Hank."

He does, frowning, but somehow not able to feel as angry as he feels like maybe he should. "You a god, then?" That seems like the most reasonable explanation, not that anything here is reasonable. 

They shrug, still casually flipping through the book in their lap. "We suppose you could say that. We've never really been interested in nomenclature." 

"Look, I've had a real long day," he says, rubbing at his temples, "So can I be straight with you? I'm so tired of this doublespeak bullshit. Like, people being all mysterious and doing this whole fortune teller routine, you know? I'm probably breaking rules or something right now, but, uh. Can you quit it?"

They look up at him with a hint of a smile tugging at their lips. "That's fair. But you're not breaking any rules by asking this, Hank. There aren't really any rules." They go back to the book. "So, no more doublespeak bullshit, as you put it," they say, calm as anything. "We created the universe you live in." 

"Cool," says Hank with his usual eloquence. "And?" 

They flash another glance at him. "And while we generally have somewhat of an artistic aversion against inserting ourselves into these things, we wanted to...check in, so to speak. You're about to have an important moment." 

"About to," Hank mutters, running a hand through his hair, then shaking his head. "Fuck's sake. Okay. So you really do know everything that's gonna happen."

"Yes."

"You know everything that's going to happen and you just—let it? All the death, all the hurt, all the misfortune. You're just chill with that?" He knows he's sneering a bit, but he can't help it. He'd like to think he's always had strong principles, stood up for what he believes in where he can, and it smarts a little to see someone with all this power just not giving a fuck about using it. 

"Creation is not control, Hank," they say, flipping another page, still seemingly unperturbed. "The universe has many stories in it, including this one, all with many unfortunate moments, and we've read them all enough times to know how they all end. But we do not interfere. It is not ours to do so." 

"Stories." He huffs out an incredulous laugh. "That's all we are to you, just stories? Just characters playing out the same old thing over and over again? Fuck. Why should any of us even bother doing anything if you've all already written this whole tragedy out, huh?" 

"Make no mistake, Hank. No matter how much it may seem otherwise, we are not writing this story. We are merely telling it. The story the universe tells about you will always be your own."

"Fuck that," says Hank vehemently, and they look up at him again, looking somewhat surprised. "This isn't just my story. It's Connor's, too, and Reed's, and Nine's, and—and you know what, actually, fuck you, it's yours too. You can try to divorce yourself from it all you want, with your pretentious little creation is not control, these are all stories, we're just telling it, blah blah whatever the fuck, but you made this place. This universe. You made it and you live in it and that means you have a fucking responsibility. You can't just watch and tell yourself you don't." 

They stare at him, looking between the book and him rapidly, now firmly in the realm of 'confused'. Hank keeps on going, stepping forward until he's right up against them. "You wanna know the story this dumbshit fucking universe tells about you? It's all of this," he gestures wildly at the bookshelves, "And in all of it you're a fucking coward. Now if you're so set on that, let me go have my fucking important moment." 

And we let him go, and we consider.

This conversation had not been part of the story, though it is now. Perhaps it is our introduction that caused this instability. Nonlinear time does not really have any rules. 

And, as we told Hank, neither do we, when it comes right down to it. 

There is a word for what happens when a god interferes with a story, in the most literal sense. Deus ex machina, a god from the machine. Something that comes conveniently from out of nowhere in order to fix everything. It is generally frowned upon as a storytelling mechanic. Against the rules.

But we don't have those, as previously mentioned, so we close the book and get up off the chair and twist space around us until we are in the place where the action is happening, unseen and unheard and unfelt, observing and ready.

The place where the action is happening is a kind of makeshift court occupied by a good number of the characters who have appeared most often in this story. There is Hank, asking from the seat to which he is confined whether Connor is all right; there is Connor answering in the affirmative. There is, next to them, hundreds of Grim Reapers from all over the world, wondering aloud what's happening. Markus and Simon, whispering together; North tapping her feet on the ground, Josh clenching his fists worriedly in his lap. And then there is the self-proclaimed God of Death, appearing from nowhere, trailed by a procession of other gods, and at the very end, Nine and Reed in glowing chains. 

At this precise moment, there is nobody in the room except for us who have all of the information, but Hank is able to put a few things together, at least: Nine and Reed are both in trouble, for some reason, and he and Connor and everybody here probably are too. Connor's gone sheet white, and he wishes he could reach out to reassure him, just touch his hand or something, but he can't move. He settles for what he hopes is a calm smile in his direction. Not that he is calm, not in any sense, but it seems the nice thing to do.

Hank doesn't recognize the God of Death or any of the gods surrounding them, but he does recognize their voice when they speak, with how it comes from everywhere all at once. It is not still, though. It simmers with barely-contained rage when they say, "I should hope you all know why you are here. You have broken the rules, and now you must be punished."

Hank tries to open his mouth to protest, maybe something about innocent until proven guilty or something, but his mouth is kept shut by some force, and he settles for a glare in their direction.

"You have conspired against the rules of the Grim Reapers. Some of you have interfered with the gift of death—spurned it, taken it away from those rightfully given it. Some of you," and here they turn to Nine, staring at him with disgust burning in their eyes, "Have given another gift entirely." 

Nine's gaze remains steady, his shoulders set, and they turn away with a hiss. 

Hank suddenly feels himself able to move his arms again, and he blinks before shrugging and raising his hand.

"What," the God of Death asks, slightly bemused.

"Can you maybe explain what's going on?" he asks, lowering his hand, raising his eyebrows in challenge. "Like, the gift thing is real cool, very literary, but also, maybe we quit the Christmas analogy and you just, like, pretend we're all in preschool."

The reapers all stare at him, Connor with a smile. Nine seems to be attempting to hide a smile himself, while Reed snorts. The god does not look similarly amused. Flabbergasted, perhaps, or irritated. 

"You speak out of turn," they finally say.

"You called on me," Hank retorts. "What, are you the only one who's allowed to talk here? Some fucking trial." 

Their frown creases deeper, but they eventually sigh. "Fine. In plain words, as the God of Death, I am responsible for enforcing the rules surrounding death. The first measure in doing so was the beginning of the Reaper system, wherein individuals who committed suicide were punished by eight hundred years in the Void and then given the opportunity to learn the value of death by an additional eight hundred years of service in guiding the souls of the recently deceased. It is an efficient system, and one that was derailed by you, Mr. Anderson, when you used your knowledge of an individual's death to keep it from happening." Their face twists before smoothing out again. "That individual being Reaper 800-51, of course, who would later commit suicide and be integrated into our system." 

Connor raises his hand, apparently also free from whatever control they were under, and says, "Connor." His other fist is clenched white against his thighs, but his voice doesn't waver. "I go by Connor now." 

The god looks at him suspiciously, but continues. "After Mr. Anderson's actions, he was put in the Void while we attempted to figure out what we could do to ensure this never occurred again. At this point, the God of Order—" They incline their head at Nine, and oh, okay, that kind of explains a thing or two—"Who had been supervising Connor prior to his death, suggested an experiment. He proposed that a punishment might only be appropriate if another Reaper in the same position would not do the same. He was sent as an undercover Reaper to investigate accordingly, with the stipulation that no action could be taken against any of the individuals under investigation until his inspection was concluded. Meanwhile, Mr. Anderson refused to show remorse for what he had done, so an alternate punishment was decided upon: unconditional immortality to make him truly understand the value of death."

Hank is barely able to keep from rolling his eyes at that. All of this laid out straight like this like it's supposed to make sense isn't making him any less angry, and he doesn't think Connor is any less angry either, from how displeasure is tugging at the corners of his mouth. He can see frowns on the faces of the other reapers, too.

"We also instituted an additional policy moving reapers from the place of their death to avoid their memories being jogged by seeing reincarnations of people they had known during their previous lifetime. But some reapers—and here you must certainly know who you are—discovered a little provision meant to find those not averse to breaking the rules. By bestowing a kiss of death on another reaper, their memories could be restored. A number of reapers who had done this banded together, conspiring against the system. And two of them—an ex-reaper and a reaper who have been mentioned before—conspired to stop another death together." The god taps their finger against a frozen, dangerous smile. "But worst of all, when they discovered they could not do so, one of our very own, the God of Order who had been sent to investigate and was strictly prohibited from interfering in any way, flouted the rules by waiting for the man in question to die and then making him into a god." 

"Wait, what the fuck?" Hank blurts out. Reed shrugs, mouths not my fault, but Hank can't stop staring wide-eyed at him or at Nine, who has the decency at least to look vaguely apologetic. 

"Language, Mr. Anderson!"

"Please, you've been watching over humanity's worst and lowest since the beginning of time or whatever the fuck and you can't deal with a swear word?" Hank scoffs. "With all due respect, and by that I mean none at all, you're full of shit." 

The god's face goes furious, and they start to say something, but they're interrupted by Connor, still white-knuckled but steady, saying "I agree. Have you ever even been human? I'm going to presume not, unless you say otherwise." He pauses, but the god doesn't contradict him. "Right. You've never been human, and yet you profess to know what is best for them. You say you give a gift, which is by nature supposed to be something freely given, and surround it with strings. You punish people who kill themselves without sympathy for the circumstances that make them feel this is necessary. You set harsh punishments for those who break the strict rules you've created, but take away the memories that might allow them to learn and set up traps all along the way for those who dare to question your authority." 

"You—" 

"I agree with Connor also," says Markus calmly, raising his hand. "I don't even think you play by the same rules you've set. You said the God of Order was sent to investigate whether another reaper would do the same thing as Hank in a similar situation, yes? To figure out whether it would require punishment? Not only did Connor attempt the same thing as Hank, one of the gods did something even more radical, and yet you still bring us all here for punishment. What was the purpose of the exercise, if not actually to determine the validity of the punishment you already set in place? And if you are not willing to be fair, if you too are subject to emotion and personal biases, what qualifies you to be an arbiter at all?" 

"Why can you all talk," asks the god, red-faced and tight-lipped. 

"We're afraid that's our fault," says a voice from the crowd, and when Hank looks around, he sees the god from the library. "On both counts, more or less." 

The God of Death gapes at them, and they smile apologetically.

"When we left this universe to its own devices, certain souls latched onto the residual power more easily, and took it upon themselves to use this power to enforce organization. Rules, if you will." They walk closer to the gods, surveying them. "And because we had decided not to interfere, we did not interfere with this. But you do realize you're being a bit silly, don't you?" 

They continue to gape. 

"Or perhaps not," they muse. "Perhaps you genuinely have convinced yourself you've done right. But you can be the hero of your own story and the villain in a greater one. It may be beneficial for you to know this." 

"Can you get to the point," calls Hank irritably. "Fuck, you’re such a pretentious ass."

They flash a grin at him. "Yes, of course. My apologies."

And what happens next is as follows: the God of Death is sent to learn what it is like to be a human. They will eventually come to understand that they were, indeed, being silly (put lightly), but it will come after quite some time. The future tense is tricky like that, and so is understanding. After all, as promised, Hank did understand why he was put in that field, but he never did agree with it. 

The Grim Reapers are absolved of wrongdoing, and while death still happens and there are still those who guide it, the position is not so much a punishment as a volunteer opportunity. Power is rearranged; Markus, Simon, North, and Josh orchestrate a plan whereby there are fewer rules and less direct oversight, and what oversight there is done by committee. There are no gods, just humans doing their best to figure things out. 

Or—well. This is not entirely accurate. We still exist, and will likely continue to do so, building machines where appropriate to enable humans to speak up for themselves and fight for a better story. And Nine and Gavin Reed still exist, too, though they've sworn off administration in favor of continuing to fight crime together, and sometimes to watch romance films together, and sometimes to exchange innuendoes until one of them gives in and makes innuendo reality. 

But none of this is, precisely, the point. It is part of it, of course, but while Hank was correct that this story contains multitudes beyond himself, it is still at its heart a story about him and Connor, and the ending they find in one another.

This is not that ending, but what comes next is close enough to it that it is where we will, for one last time, start.

Chapter Text

 At the end of everything, transported back to his apartment and sitting on the couch, Connor stares blankly at his hands and thinks, I have no idea what happens now.

Connor's life has been a lot of things—long, difficult, conflicted—but it's never really been directionless. When he was a peasant, he knew what he was supposed to do: lay low, work hard, and die someday. When he was a reaper, he knew what to do also. Follow the rules. Don't ask questions. And even when Hank came along—and, God, that feels like ages ago now, but he knows it wasn't really—even in the whirlwind of all that, there was purpose: help find the killer. Save Reed.

But now, with everything dismantled, with everything he's known more or less in shambles, he feels terribly lost, set adrift without a compass. What does tomorrow look like? The day after that? The next few years, the next fifty? If he's being frank, at least some part of him had expected ever since starting this that his existence would be terminated for his crimes against the establishment. He hadn't really thought this far. 

"You okay?" Hank asks next to him, spread out and leaning against the couch back in contrast to Connor's rigid posture, but staring just as blankly up at the ceiling. "I guess that's stupid to ask."

"Not stupid." Connor exhales lightly. "I don't know what to do."

"About?"

"About—anything. Any of this. I'm not a reaper anymore. I'm not a criminal. I'm—" Hysterical laughter threatens to bubble from his chest. "God, what am I now, even?"

Hank is silent a moment. Then he puts one hand on the couch between them, close enough for Connor to touch if he wants, but not so much he doesn't have to if he doesn't wants. An invitation. "I mean—I know this isn't gonna be enough. I was here once, more or less, and I don't think I can say it ever got easy. But. I don't really think you have to be anything but Connor, you know?"

Connor smiles, slow, wry, and rests his hand on Hank's. "You're assuming I know who that is after all this."

"Nah." Hank's hand flips over, twines their fingers together, squeezes once and then twice. "But I do know you can find out. You already know some things."

"Like?"

"Like you like dogs. And tea. Like...that you care about what's right, and about helping. That, uh, that you're really awkward sometimes, but—but it's sweet. That you're sweet, and kind, and kind of beautiful. That...you have folks who care about you."

He's still looking at the ceiling when Connor checks, but less blank now, and the color's starting to rise up his neck. Connor smiles again, more sincerely this time, and leans against Hank. "I know all that?"

"You damn well should," Hank grumbles. "Without needing to ask. You heard me. You're smart. Jesus."

"Mm." Connor squeezes his hand back. "Well. Not smart enough to have a life direction planned out just yet, maybe, but...maybe just for now, we could...I don't know. Go to your house, cuddle with Sumo, watch a movie? It could be another date."

"Just for now," Hank echoes, thoughtful, looking down and over at Connor. His eyes soften. "Yeah. We can definitely do that."

So they do.

Days for a while are like that—bundled up in just-for-nows and at-presents, in little moments where they don't think about the future or their place in it, just in where they're at. They watch movies, they go out for lunch and dinner, they work and sleep and wake up and keep going. It's the little things, after all, the showers in the morning and the grocery shopping in the afternoon and the long, boring in-betweens, the things that don't make it in most stories, that really make up the majority of human time. Not everything can be grand declarations and epic battles. Nor should it be. The big stuff, that's what turns the pages, maybe, but you couldn't read it without the spaces between the words.

Of course, they are not precisely human anymore, either, because if they were, they probably wouldn't have to deal with this.

"Jesus Christ, Gavin, you leave for three months and then show back up out of fucking nowhere with—don't even fucking get me started on you, Nine, you—"

"You're not even gonna say hello?" Gavin interrupts, throwing his coat off and onto the ground. Connor, looking pained, picks it up and hangs it on the coat rack by the front door. Nine badly suppresses a smile.

"You piece of shit—" Hank yells, face going angry-red, and Connor sighs and pats him on the shoulder.

"Hank. Sit down, please. Sumo looks worried."

He does, though it's probably mostly because Nine and Gavin didn't pet him upon their arrival. Connor makes up for it by beckoning him over to the couch, and after a tense moment Hank follows him to sit.

"So. You're back," Hank finally mumbles. "Where the fuck were you?"

Gavin hesitates, but Nine has no such qualms. Proudly, he informs them, "We had a Vegas wedding."

Hank bristles, starting to stand again. Connor tiredly pulls him back down. "You fucking wh—"

"Look, Nine said he was curious what being drunk felt like, and—"

"And so you took him to Vegas and got married?"

"We were already linked by a bond that goes beyond human understanding," Nine offers.

"You, shut the fuck up," Hank growls, crossing his arms. "You got married. You, my godson, who vanished without a fucking trace, who I wasn't sure if I was going to see again. You got fucking married, and you didn't fucking invite me—"

"How the fuck was I supposed to invite you? It was Vegas!"

"You're a fucking god now, I think you probably could have figured something out! Sent some angels or some shit to tell me you were being a dumbass!"

"Angels don't exist," Nine interjects. Hank blinks slowly at him, and Nine winces. "Sorry."

"Look, I—" Gavin starts, then deflates a bit. "I just—I needed some time to adjust, okay? I'm...I am sorry. I should've said something, but—I don't know. It's not every day you die and come back a minor deity."

Hank pauses, sinking back into the couch, and sighs. "I...okay. Yeah. I guess I get that, a bit. Like, you're still a dick for doing it, but...yeah."

Gavin squirms uncomfortably in his seat. Quietly, he says, "Not to do emotions, or whatever, but. I'm glad you're okay. I, uh...missed you. Or. Yeah. Whatever."

"...Same. I guess."

The silence grows, until Nine says cheerily, "Well, that was a beautiful display of repressed emotion and all, but I do actually enjoy some speech alongside my awkward silences."

Hank flushes, and Connor frowns before saying somewhat acerbically, "By all means. Care to explain why you look like me? Since there's no such thing as coincidences, and all."

Nine's smile freezes. "Ah. Well."

"Right." Connor's own smile is deceptively pleasant. "For someone who's supposed to know so much, I think they may have forgotten to tell you how to be polite."

"Listen—" Nine starts, then falters.

Connor takes pity on him and sighs, combing a hand through his hair. "Maybe we should change gears for now. I'm presuming one night in Vegas didn't occupy all your time, yes? What else did you two get up to?"

They talk for some time after that, about all the places they went, about how Hank is considering changing jobs, about the new dogs that have come through the shelter and how Connor's become an official employee. There's still some tension there. It's hard to just forget that the people you're talking with are gods, even if they're gods you've known for a long time. But it's better, at least. Connor can see Hank relaxing as time wears on.

At the end of the evening, when Gavin says he wants to sleep already, and Nine reminds him he doesn't have to and Gavin reminds him that he likes sleeping, it's then that Nine pulls Connor aside, shifting his weight in an uncharacteristic display of nervousness. "You're angry at me," he says eventually.

"Nine, I'm mostly just confused. I can—I mean, I can understand that you were doing your duty when we first met—I can understand that after that, you were just—I know why you couldn't tell me. I understand that. I don't understand why you'd watch me die and then...and then look like me. Is it some kind of joke at my expense? I don't—"

"No! No, it's—" He stops, then starts again, more calm. "Not at all. I was—I respected you, Connor. I didn't agree with your decision and I suspect you might not now either, but you at least attempted to stand up for yourself against an impossible force. I...I couldn't do that. Not until the end."

Connor stares at him, processing, not sure how to feel. He's not a hero. Not then, not now. He just...didn't want them to win. And he was just tired. Really, that was probably most of it.

"Okay." He reaches out a hesitant hand to lightly tap Nine on the shoulder, then withdraws. "You should get back to Gavin."

Nine nods stiffly, making as if to turn around, but pauses midway through. "Connor. I know...a number of things have happened. To all of us. But. You were, in many ways, my first friend. I'd like to...keep that. If I could."

Connor attempts a smile. "I suppose I'd like that also, then."

When he goes back to Hank, he knows he's probably somewhat subdued. Visibly so, if Hank's reaction is anything to go by. He's gotten ready for bed; the conversation wasn't long, but certainly long enough for Hank to take off his sweats and get under the covers, and he lifts them up and beckons Connor under them. Connor removes his button-up and his slacks and goes willingly into his embrace, resting his head over Hank's heart and closing his eyes.

"Figured that might take something out of you."

Connor frowns lightly, starting to run his hands through Hank's hair absentmindedly. "I should be saying the same thing to you. You had to deal with Gavin and with Nine."

"I mean, yeah. Gavin is, uh, he was always gonna take a while for me to come to terms with. But. I mean. I always knew Nine was an asshole." Hank's shoulder moves in a kind of partial shrug. "Gavin, I just have to reconcile that he's a god now, and that he isn't as—I dunno. Tied down to me as he was once, maybe. And that he's married." Hank's scowl returns, and Connor drops a kiss on his collarbone. "But. Maybe I'm off base here, but you and Nine—seems more like, I dunno, somebody you maybe looked up to, thought of in a very particular way, and you have to realize that he's different. Not all that. Not perfect. And that shit is always gonna be hard."

Connor considers that. "I suppose I did think that he was an exemplary Reaper. He never seemed to have any of the doubts I had. It's interesting that he's never seemed to have more than after I learned he was a being meant to be even more perfect."

Hank snorts. "Yeah, well. Fuck knows the gods are far from that."

Connor hums noncommittally, snuggling further into Hank. Honestly, he doesn't even really know how angry he is at Nine, or how he feels about the gods, or—a lot of things. He doesn't know a lot of things, these days. He had been irritated at Nine for downplaying the effort it took Hank to express himself, irritated at them both for barging in to remind them that things aren't normal for them. That they can't be. Because he doesn't know a lot of things, but he does know how he feels about Hank, and he knows that he wants to keep being with him, to try to salvage the scraps of the lives that were taken from them and make something uniquely theirs.

"Hank."

"Mm?"

"Do you want to die?" 

Hank chokes, nearly heaving Connor off his chest with the force of it. "Jesus! What the—Jesus fuck, what brought that on? Are you offering?"

"No, of course not," Connor rushes. "I mean—before—everything. You...wanted that, right? Do you still want an end?"

There's still a bit of residual flush on Hank's cheeks when he looks down at Connor, a bit inscrutable, a bit confused, a bit contemplative. He scratches his head with the hand not on Connor's shoulder and sighs. "Huh. I mean. That's—shit, Con, that's kinda heavy."

"Oh, sorry—" he rushes to apologize, but Hank squeezes his shoulder.

"Hang on. Doesn't mean I'm not fine to answer, I just have to think about it." He taps his fingers against Connor's shoulder. "I dunno. I guess...I don't know what life is going to be like a few decades from now. Because I kinda used to, right? I didn't know exactly what was going to happen, but I knew I wasn't going to be happy. Because I knew everybody I knew, everybody I ended up caring about, I knew all of them were going to die and I was going to stay here. Just—keep staying here, not doing much of anything, not meaning much of anything, just somebody stuck alone watching. I didn't want that. I never would've wanted that." His fingers tap again, slower now, almost a caress. "But now? There's somebody else sticking around with me, and that kinda changes a lot."

"Gavin," Connor agrees, nodding.

Hank's fingers stop, then run down Connor's arm. "No, dumbass. You. I mean, sure, Gavin, but—mostly you, Con. You have to realize how much you've changed everything."

Connor gazes at him, then smiles, flushing and terribly, hopelessly, endlessly in love. Neither of them have said it yet, not in so many words, but Connor doesn't think he could stop himself. Wouldn't want to. "I love you."

Hank blinks, mouth falling open slightly. "What?"

"You heard me," Connor parrots back to him—Hank's own words from three months ago. Mostly to be a little shit. "You're smart. Jesus."

"God, you—" Hank shakes his head, like he's trying to clear it of something. "No, like—I want to make sure you said it. That."

Connor hums again and tilts Hank's head down to kiss him. When they part, he says, "I said I love you, and I said it because I meant it. And I'll keep saying it, for as long as you let me 'stick around'." He pauses, uncertain for the first time. "If—that's all right?"

"Fuck," Hank says wonderingly. "I mean. Shit, Connor, of course—" He interrupts himself with another kiss, deep and almost urgent. "Of fucking course that's 'all right', more than, I—fuck, I'm mixing this all up. I love you too. More than I ever thought I could, you're—you're just—I love you too."

Connor's smile turns to a bright grin as he presses kiss after kiss against Hank's lips, whispering I love you into his mouth, growing warmer every time Hank huffs and says it back. He's grinning too, eyes crinkling at the corners and twinkling blue, and Connor kisses those wrinkles and all the other ones he can chase while he's at it. 

"Don't know why you like those so much," Hank mumbles, kissing Connor's nose, pulling him closer. "They make me look old."

"They're a part of you, and I love you. If I haven't mentioned." He winks, and Hank rolls his eyes fondly. "And anyway, you're only 1100 years older than me. Barely anything."

"Hey," Hank mock-protests, rolling over on top of him, face stern. "That's 1100 years of seniority and experience against you, mister."

Connor kisses him again; he can't seem to stop. "Nah. What's 1100 years against all the time in the world?"

And Hank's face softens, and he drops his head against Connor's neck, and Connor can feel the smile against his skin. "Yeah. All the time we want."

What happens thereafter is not a moment we will intrude on, and everything after that we'll let them have to themselves, also. They've earned a lifetime, many lifetimes, of in-between moments—of quiet mornings in the sun and walks through the park, of watching television and traveling and spending time with friends, of kissing one another and being with one another. They've earned that, and they've earned their end.

This story will end. Perhaps not conventionally, with a death or with time wearing away their memory or with, even, an explicit happily ever after. But this story ends, and it ends like this: with two people, who wake up together and live their lives together and try to find happiness together. It ends with Hank and Connor in love.

And, really, that was more or less the point all along.